After spending four years in Europe he settled in New York in 1881, where he shared a studio with his brother Francis Coates Jones for the rest of his long life.

He was celebrated for his realistic depictions of calm rural scenes of the eastern United States at different times of the year, usually empty of people.

[2] He went on to study at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore under David Acheson Woodward, the portrait painter.

His 1874 painting Summer in the Blue Ridge was exhibited at the National Academy of Design and was highly praised.

[6] In 1881 Jones became a member of the Society of American Artists, and in 1883 he was elected an academician at the National Academy of Design.

[6] He also undertook most of the interior decoration of the showpiece studio that he eventually established at 33 West Sixty-Seventh Street in Manhattan.

[1] In 1888 the Jones brothers moved to the Clinton Studio Building with their sister Louise Chubb, who was widowed.

[9] He was a trustee of the Baltimore Museum of Art from its foundation in 1914 until his death at age 78 from pernicious anemia on 24 September 1927 in New York City.

[7] The influence of Frederic Edwin Church and the Hudson River School shows in his handling of light and the precision of his en plein air depictions of nature.

[1] His earlier paintings are lit by a clear, bright light, and sharply detailed, while his later works were more muted and lyrical.

In his last decades, Jones' work became increasingly stale, repeating the same subjects and compositions in an outdated style.

[9] Thomas B. Clarke (1848–1931) said of him in 1891, A native painter of American landscape, who has never been touched by any fashions in art, is H. Bolton Jones.

He studies her form, color and various characteristics, and gives us the result of his investigations in transcripts of familiar scenes that are rich in rural charms.