Barbara Jones (artist)

Barbara Mildred Jones (25 December 1912 – 28 August 1978) was an English artist, writer and mural painter.

[2] 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.

[3] She sought commissions but realised that building up work to be free-lance would take time so took a part-time teaching post.

In 1951 Jones co-curated (with Tom Ingram) Black Eyes and Lemonade, an exhibition of craft, folk, and popular objects at the Whitechapel Gallery.

[10] In this way, Black Eyes and Lemonade, amongst other work by Jones, made public many of the ideas that would later become important for the emergence of pop art in Britain.

[9] Objects displayed in the exhibition included horse brasses, corn dollies, canal boat artwork, ship's figureheads, and the outfits of Pearly Kings and Queens, alongside more contemporary cultural artefacts including the Idris Talking Lemon, beer mats, pest control adverts and shop posters.

In 1941 (9 April, at Luton Registry Office), Jones married the artist Clifford Barry, whom she had met while at the Royal College of Art.

[12][13] By the end of the war they had moved back to London, first to Croydon, then to Hampstead, first living at Sheriff Road, and ultimately at 2 Well Walk, which was to be Jones's base for the rest of her life.