Ida Jones collection

1931-1988 [bulk 1951-1988]

Ida Ella Ruth Jones, primitive American folk painter, was the daughter of a former slave who began her artistic career in 1945 at age 72. Most of her early years were spent working on her parents' farm and caring for her younger brothers and sisters. In 1892 she married William Jones, minister of the Church of Christ in Ercildoun, Pennsylvania and the village blacksmith. Together they raised ten children, including Ida J. Williams, who also became her biographer.

Jones devoted her time to her family, church and community until she began painting in both oil and watercolor. A "primitive," with only three formal lessons in oil painting, she painted the things around her that she loved most: houses, fields, landscapes, flowers, fruit and animals, as well as biblical parables. Her work was discovered which led to several exhibitions and one-woman shows. She first exhibited at the Chester County (Pa.) Art Association's 19th Annual Spring Show in 1950. In 1951 her first one-woman show was held at Lincoln University. Two years later Mr. and Mrs. Walter P. Townsend, friends and patrons of the artist, sponsored another one-woman show in Pennsylvania. In 1952 Jones' paintings were exhibited with the work of 115 other artists at the Pyramid Club Art Show in Philadelphia. In addition, her work was shown at the Art Alliance in that city, where a New York collector took interest in her painting. In all, Jones completed over three hundred paintings in her fourteen years as an artist.