Samuel Maurice Jones

[1] 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.

[3] The first entry in the study book detailing his lesson with Collingwood on Monday 11 April 1870, recalls his teachers' words: 'You must regard your hand as an instrument requiring to be taught how to execute with certainty and freedom, every mental command.

In addition to Turner, the sketchbook contains copies of works by Claude and Richard Wilson, an influential Welsh landscape painter and founding member of the Royal Academy.

Though the 1974 notebook contains a number of street scenes and impressionistic figure and portrait studies, it is evident that from the time of his artistic training onwards, Jones' primary interest lay in depicting landscapes.

The notebook of his lessons under Collingwood between 1870 and 1873 report that Jones was encouraged to go on frequent sketching trips back home in Wales, including to Betws-y-Coed, drawing directly from nature.

Jones' watercolours of the 1880s depict conventional rural scenes featuring quaint cottages, deserted castles, shaded country lanes and rivers, and often, single, solitary figures, passing through or at work in the landscape.

Such visions of country life are consistent with fashions in late Victorian landscape painting as exemplified by the works of Henry John Kinnaird, and the women artists Kate Greenaway and Helen Allingham.

[9] He was an influential member of Clwb Awen a Chân, a men's dining and cultural society in Caernarfon,[10] Though Jones did not attract considerable critical interest in his lifetime, he did meet with moderate professional success.