Ray Howard-Jones

Rosemary "Ray" Howard-Jones (30 May 1903 – 25 June 1996) was a prolific Welsh painter best known for her impressionistic seascapes and paintings of the coastline of Wales, particularly of the areas around Skomer and Marloes.

Early life and education

Howard-Jones was born in Lambourn, Berkshire, in 1903. Her father was a vet and racehorse trainer who enlisted in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps during World War I. He served on the Western Front rising to the rank of Colonel but died in 1921 from the effects of a war-time gas attack. Both her parents were Welsh and, after they split up, at the age of two Ray Howard-Jones went to live at her grandfather's house in Penarth. She also worked as a designer and creative director for East Moor's Theatre in Splott, near to the Cardiff Docks.

Post-war career In 1946 Howard-Jones spent some time in Scotland at the art school run by James Cowie at Hospitalfield House. A love affair developed between Howard-Jones and Cowie and his nude study of her and her, more abstract, tribute to him are both in the Glasgow Museums collection.

For nine summers, between 1949 and 1958, Howard-Jones and Moore served as the resident caretakers of Skomer Island off the coast of Pembrokeshire. From 1959 Howard-Jones and Moore returned to Pembrokeshire on a regular basis, spending extended periods in a simple cottage at Martin's Haven.

In 1959 Howard-Jones had a solo show at the Leicester Galleries in London. Over the next ten years she was to have five shows there. She also exhibited with the Royal Society of British Artists and with the Royal Cambrian Academy. In all her work featured in almost thirty solo shows in Britain and her work is represented in galleries in both Australia and the United States. The Welsh Arts Council toured two retrospectives of her work, first in 1974 and again in 1983 and 1984. The Rocket Press organised a life-time retrospective of her work in 1993, which Howard-Jones attended and included works she had produced in her late eighties. The 35-feet high mosaic included a giant blue eye which represented the role of the Western Mail newspaper in Wales. After almost 50 years the mosaic and the building were demolished in 2008 before the Twentieth Century Society was able to save it. The Society described it as "one of the finest post-war mosaics in Britain". The only surviving mosaic by Howard-Jones is her 1965 altarpiece in Edinburgh.