Biography
Barbara Jones was born in Croydon, Surrey. She attended Coloma Convent Girls' School, and (from May to July 1924) went to Croydon High School before going on to Croydon School of Art then studying Mural Decoration at the Royal College of Art.
During World War II she was associated with the Recording Britain project of the Pilgrim Trust. Examples of her striking murals were for the post-war Britain Can Make It exhibition of 1946, the 1951 Festival of Britain exhibition; on the P&O passenger liner ships SS Orcades, SS Oronsay, SS Orsova and SS Oriana, and for hotels, restaurants, exhibitions and schools. She made designs for the children's television series The Woodentops. Most of the works, because of the nature of where they were created, have now disappeared. However many books containing her artwork remain, in the form of dust-jackets and illustrations.
In 1951 Barbara organised Black Eyes and Lemonade, a Festival of Britain related exhibition of popular and traditional art at the Whitechapel Gallery. In 1999 an exhibition was held at the Katharine House Gallery in Marlborough which contained many works that she had kept in her studio in Hampstead.
She was said to belong to that group of Royal College of Art artists and illustrators, more well-known than she, who were her contemporaries: John Piper, Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious and Edward Ardizzone. When she was at Croydon High School she made friends with a girl called Joyce Drew who later became architect and town planner Jane Drew, and it seems they influenced each other in their careers: Jane said they stayed friends.
She married the artist Clifford Barry whom she met at the Royal College of Art, and he designed the covers for some of her books. The marriage did not last long and they did not have any children.
Read more about this topic: Barbara Jones (artist)
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