painter, was born in Bendigo, daughter of Frederick Douglas Jones, a barrister and solicitor. She was educated at Girton College, Bendigo, and from 1912 studied art at the National Gallery School under Bernard Hall , winning several student prizes. In 1917, at the end of her studies, she won the coveted Travelling Scholarship, which offered overseas study for two years. Unable to take this up immediately because of World War I, she painted portraits in Melbourne. Her solo exhibition in 1918 included a portrait of Ola Cohn . A photograph of her painting a client in her Melbourne studio at about this time includes her winning scholarship painting. She also painted Prime Minister Billy Hughes (Parliament House, Melbourne) and Viscount Novar, Governor-General of Australia [ 1914-20 ].
Jones finally left for London in 1921 where she had a moderately successful career. She exhibited at the Royal Academy (1921, 1923), at the Paris Salon (1923), at the Royal Scottish Academy, at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, with the New Society of Artists and with the London Portrait Society. A flamboyant personality, she was popular in London society – which led to several portrait commissions. Later in the 1920s she returned to Australia and in January 1926 was busy at work in Adelaide Perry 's 'Chelsea Art School’ at Bulletin Place, Sydney, painting a portrait of Mrs Hewson of Queensland and completing other Australian commissions. Although proposing to return to England in February, this seems to have been postposed. She was called 'a young Victorian artist who is revisiting Australia’ in the October issue of Home , which illustrated her 'Lady Keith Smith, a canvas painted in 1924’, Summer (a portrait given this title for exhibition, not an allegorical work) and 'A portrait of John, the son of Falkiner Hewson Esq’. In January 1926 Society reported on her painting of three-year-old Patricia Bousfield 'listening to some fairy folk who surely dwell somewhere in the woods near Bowral’.
Back in London, Jones continued to specialise in portraiture. The Australian Woman’s Mirror of 30 April 1929 mentioned her exhibition held with a 'sister-painter’ who also had Australian associations, the miniaturist Hon. Lady Henniker-Heaton (born Rose Bennett in Sydney, daughter of the former editor of the Empire newspaper and wife of Sir John – who, as plain Mr Heaton, had been a NSW journalist in the 1870s-80s). Jones’s oil portrait of Senator D. Andrews was presented to Bendigo Art Gallery in 1930, the year her oil painting of Margaret Itarman was hung at the Royal Academy. She returned to Victoria in 1932, exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society then abandoned painting professionally, partly because of family bereavements.
During World War II Marion Jones worked in the Bendigo Ordnance Factory. Much of her London work, which had been left in storage, was destroyed during the blitz. 'The world has changed. There is no place for art and beauty’, she stated after the war. Despite living on for another three decades she never painted again. Extant work includes a self-portrait Moi Même (p.c.), which Peers calls 'Lambertesque’.
When Cui Bono was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1923, London critics interpreted it as a late example of the 'Problem Picture’ genre so popular in the Edwardian era. From the late 1890s people of all classes had flocked to the Royal Academy to see paintings depicting mental anguish in high society, especially examples by the Hon. John Collier. In both London and Australia they also attended Problem Plays, notably those by Sir Arthur Pinero in which, George Taylor wrote, 'the question of the wife’s chastity was stretched over three long acts’. Although a prone girl in a tutu labelled Cui Bono ( Who Benefits? ) does not pose a very profound problem, but part of the enjoyment, or otherwise, in solving Problem Pictures was the shallowness of the message. Ten years earlier Theo Cowan had exhibited a sculpture at the Chenil Gallery, London called The Problem , which, according to the Sydney Morning Herald of 10 June 1913, showed 'a young girl lying on a grassy bank, gazing into a bowl held up by a faun, the problem being the maiden’s choice of good or evil’. Jones, wisely, was more discrete about explaining her problem. Had her ballerina suddenly realised that those glorious, dominant pearls were the first step on the 'Road to Ruin’? If so, had the realisation come 'Too Late’ (another popular title of the day)? Is there perhaps a hint of criticism of ambitious middle-class mothers driving their inadequately talented daughters to despair? Whatever the answer, the ambiguity appealed to the British public and won the picture a certain fame. As Juliet Peers points out, Jones’s painting was reproduced in colour in the Tatler , mentioned in a contemporary novel and lampooned in Punch .
In fact, the painting’s Problem Picture characteristics were largely fortuitous. It is more accurate to state that Cui Bono is a reflection of Jones’s Melbourne training, both subject and style being in the manner of her painting teacher at the National Gallery School, Bernard Hall , a man fond of painting off-stage ballerinas and moody atmosphere. Jones had triumphantly graduated six years earlier by winning the 1917 National Gallery Travelling Scholarship ( Eugenie Durran was runner up), but she had only been in London for little more than a year when she exhibited Cui Bono , having been forced to remain in Melbourne painting portraits during World War I. The homage to Bernard Hall may have been deliberate, for Cui Bono was destined to return to Victoria. Jones offered it to the National Gallery of Victoria after it was shown in London as the original work required under the terms of her scholarship. It was a most acceptable proof of her prowess. The fact that it had been hung at the Royal Academy (and noticed!) could not fail to impress. Unfortunately, its popularity soon waned. Since Jones was a native of Bendigo, Cui Bono was despatched to that city’s more youthful and less well-stocked gallery where it remained until 1994 when it was then returned to the NGV.
- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
