This exhibition, in the Mount House Gallery from 27th January to 12th February, charted the root origins of an artist making his way at the beginning of his career in Post-War Britain, together with what he created the decade after leaving Art College. Stanley Jones’s earliest work displays an observant eye for detail fortified by a sure and confident hand. His work post-Slade and Atelier 17 marry mid-20th century School of Paris with the English Pastoral.
Born in Wigan (near Liverpool and Manchester) in 1933, Stanley was the son of Elizabeth (nee Cartwright) and George Jones, who was an engine driver. Stanley’s talent for painting and drawing emerged at an early age, and his parents encouraged him wholeheartedly, his father often using his free travel perk to take him to the National Gallery in London. After studying at Wigan Grammar School and Wigan Art School, Stanley gained an Art Scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art (University College, London) in 1954. Here he was taught by Sir William Coldstream, whose painting technique and colour palette can be strongly felt across Stanley’s works. In the 1950s art staff at the Slade fostered a supportive, experimental atmosphere, particularly within its printmaking department, which allowed students to move beyond traditional life drawing and topographical image-making. The love of experiment and the desire to push materials to yield new possibilities never left Stanley.
The industrial Wigan scenes were created during Stanley’s teenage years as were his landscapes and still life, all created just before Stanley went to the Slade School of Art (1954-1956), and from there he worked and studied at Atelier 17, (1959-1958) an art school and studio run by Stanley William Hayter C.B.E. (1901-1988), arguably one of the most significant printmakers of the 20th century. Like the Slade, this atelier was highly influential in the study and promotion of experimentally creative original printmaking, and it was here that Stanley developed his lithographic and etching skills and his approach to making Art. The famous OM Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman described Stanley’s work as ‘Artistic Alchemy’.
Professionally, Stanley Jones was a Master-Printer and founder of The Curwen Studio and The Curwen Print Study Centre. From the 1970’s onwards Stanley was one of Britain’s most esteemed printmakers. He had a brilliant rapport with artists, involving them in every stage of the creative process, working with many of the 20th century’s most well-known artists, including Dame Barbara Hepworth, David Hockney, Dame Elisabeth Frink, Ceri Richards, Dame Paula Rego and Henry Moore.
Throughout his career Stanley exhibited his own work both as a painter and a printmaker. He was a founder member and President of the Printmaker’s Council, and his work is held in major collections and public galleries around the world. In 1989 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, and a decade later he received an honorary doctorate from Southampton University. In 2008 he was made an M.B.E.
Stanley died in 2023 at the age of 89. All those who met him will remember his calm, gentle and avuncular nature, and the artists he worked with will remember the generosity and kindness with which he shared his skills, knowledge and love of art. I curated this exhibition as a tribute to Stanley’s creativity.
The work on display was donated by the Jones’ Family Estate to the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers (RE) in 2024. It will provide the starting point for this year’s Art Scholars’ Project, which will be on display during the first half of the Summer Term (including Prize Day on Saturday 23rd May) in the Mount House Gallery.
Edward Twohig RE
Head of Art & Director of Visual Heritage
