Barbara Mildred Jones (25 December 1912 – 28 August 1978) was an English artist, writer and mural painter. She is known for curating the exhibition Black Eyes and Lemonade (1951) and her books The Unsophisticated Arts (1951), and Follies and Grottoes (1953, expanded and reissued 1974, 1989).
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Early life and education
Barbara Jones was born in Croydon, Surrey. She was an only child. Her father had a saddlery and harness business at a time when Croydon was still a rural suburb. Her first sketchbooks were filled with horses and farm machinery. Her background was a comfortable, middle class one. She attended Coloma Convent Girls' School, Croydon High School, from May 1924 to July 1930, and then Croydon Art School, [1931-1933]. From Croydon she went on to the Department of Engraving at the Royal College of Art but felt unsuited so transferred to the Department of Mural Decoration in her second year. She was taught by the likes of Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden. She graduated in 1937. An exceptional survival of work from this period has been restored at the University of London’s Senate House, where Jones, with four other students from the Royal College of Art, created a painted ceiling in 1936. Jones wrote about the project in her Water-Colour painting (1960). She sought commissions but realised that building up work to be free-lance would take time so took a part-time teaching post. Following the outbreak of the Second World War she accompanied the school where she was teaching on its evacuation to Luton.