Samuel Maurice Jones

Samuel Maurice Jones R.C.A. (1853 – 30 December 1932) was a Welsh landscape painter and illustrator, particularly active in North Wales. Working principally in watercolour, Jones made numerous studies and paintings of the fields near Caernarfon and the Conwy Valley. Many of these rural studies have an idealised, pastoral, character suggestive of the English picturesque and Romantic landscape traditions originating in the works of John Constable and developed by J.M.W Turner.

Early life Samuel Maurice Jones was born in Mochdre, a coastal village in north-east Wales near Colwyn Bay. His father, Rev. John Jones, was a Calvinistic Methodist minister. Jones was trained first at the Caernarfon School of Art under the tutelage of John Cambrian Rowland and later, in London where he studied under William Collingwood between 1870 and 1873. Collingwood was an Associate of the Society of Painters in Watercolours and offered Jones a thorough and traditional training in the fundamentals of arts education; schooling him in the importance of line and composition, shading, drawing carefully from nature and drawing from memory. The first entry in the study book documenting his lesson with Collingwood on Monday, 11 April 1870, recalls his teachers' words: (O.M. Edwards).

Marriage Samuel Maurice Jones married Jane Jones on 14 December 1892 in a Calvinistic Methodist ceremony. According to the marriage certificate, the wedding was conducted at the Moriah chapel in Caernarfon and the artist was forty years old and his wife thirty-four, at the time of marriage.

Further interests Samuel Maurice Jones was a fluent Welsh language speaker. Though many of Jones' early private notebooks and sketchbooks dating to the period of his artistic training in London (c.1870) are written in English, most of his writings dating to later periods in his life, from the 1880s onwards, are written in Welsh. This growing interest in the Welsh language is reflected by Jones' wider interests. Jones contributed articles and illustrations to the Welsh-focused literary publication Cymru'' ('Wales') edited by Owen M. Edwards. In addition to publications, Maurice wrote lectures and public addresses on art and Welsh-interest topics, including on famous Welsh historic personages at the Liverpool Welsh National Society on Friday 9th 1925.

He was an influential member of Clwb Awen a Chân, a men's dining and cultural society in Caernarfon,

Awards and recognition Though Jones did not attract considerable critical interest in his lifetime, he did meet with moderate professional success. His works were exhibited in London, Liverpool, Southport and Manchester. He was also a founding member of the Royal Cambrian Academy in Conway, where he exhibited annually. In 1882 Jones was elected as an Associate Member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and elected as a full member in 1921, eleven years before his death. The artist died in Llandudno 30 December 1932.

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