page_title: Carroll N. Jones III
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Carroll N. Jones III / Biography / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: English: One of the first portraits done by Carroll Jones III. "I placed an ad in the local paper to get a few more portraits before I left in the fall. The response was overwhelming. I received enough commissions to last at least 6 months and my new career was started..." In a 10 year period, he drew over 350 portraits. Quote from Jones III, Nathaniel Press. Copyright 2013
context_page_description: Carroll Nathaniel Jones III was an artist in the style of American realism. Carroll grew up in New Providence, New Jersey, where his father, an illustrator for Life, was his first art teacher. He taught Carroll techniques of the Old Masters, who emphasized light, perspective, and composition. Carroll went to school in New York City and enrolled in the Phoenix School of Design at age 17. He later attended Hartford Art School and became a commissioned portraitist for 10 years. After his work, Church Window was recognized in the New York Times, he moved away from portraits to recreate scenes that sparked memories of his childhood. Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper most influenced Jones. The Coe-Kerr Gallery of NYC and Whistler's Daughter Gallery of New Jersey represented Jones and contemporaries, Wyeth and Hopper. Malcolm Forbes, Frederick R. Koch, Stephen Sondheim, William Schuman, and Jean Shepherd held private collections. He exhibited at Newark Museum and Trenton Art Museum in New Jersey, and in universities, galleries and museums in seven states by his mid-thirties. His work is part of the permanent collections of Seton Hall University and Newark Museum.
context_section_description: Carroll Jones III was born in July 2, 1944 in Palm Springs, California, at Torney General Hospital. Lucy Peck Jones, nee Barnes and Carroll Nathaniel Jones Jr.  lived in the former El Mirador Hotel, taken over by the army in WWII. His father was a second lieutenant in the Army Medical Corp and was stationed there as the hospital art director assigned to surgery. The elder Jones worked in Medical illustration for the Army during World War II, and later an illustrator for Life magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. His mother was the daughter of Blakeslee Barnes IV, a NYC chemical engineer and inventor. His parents met at the Yale School of Art in NYC. Jones' childhood was spent in New Providence, New Jersey, along with his younger sister, Jocelyn.His summers he spent in New Hampshire to be with his Welsh grandfather, Carroll Jones, who deeply influenced his love of the natural. Jones makes this bonding that took place with the land and people of New Hampshire apparent in the self-quote he uses to explain his work, Simple Gifts:
  
    
    "Fortunately, at some point in my childhood, I began to gain an appreciation for the simpler belongings of life. I think now, a field trip to the McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey, when I was 16, helped crystallize all the things I held so dear to my heart; that is, today, the core of my artistic sensibilities. The play was Our Town, which takes place in the fictitious town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, a town not unlike the one where I spent so much of my early years. The fictional town, and West Swanzey, New Hampshire, the actual town, were both in the shadow of Mount Monadnock, an old gentle mountain that I have climbed many times. The soul of both towns, to me, is the essential spirituality   behind all the images I have painted. It just can’t help but be."
  
  Carroll learned his disciplined approach to art from his father, Carroll N. Jones Jr. He taught young Carroll the ways of the masters from the 16th century Renaissance in theories of light, shade, perspective, color, and composition. Carroll Jones III attended the Phoenix School of Design in NYC, and the Hartford Art School in West Hartford, Connecticut. Following his education, he supported himself for ten years doing commissioned penciled portraits, capturing the sensitive details of his subjects. The Chatham Press described him in 1976, shortly before a change to the architectural drawings and oil paintings he came to be known for: "In a time when the discord of the avant-garde seems to prevail, Carroll, an artist of exacting self criticism, has resigned himself to defend a refined conception of beauty. His work is quiet and reflective and invites introspection. His style is his own..."
caption: Portrait Of A Little Girl by Carroll Jones III (1968)--First commissioned portrait
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