Jay Connaway

Jay Connaway

Jay Connaway

Jay Connaway

Jay Connaway

Jay Connaway

Jay Connaway

A student of the sky, waves, and snow-covered hills of Maine and Vermont, Jay Connaway belonged to the generation that presented the region as timeless and quiet in the face of modernity and ensured that the image of New England maintained a prominent role in the American imagination. 

Connaway enjoyed a reputation as one of the most promising young marine painters of the 1920s. Prolific, well-known, and highly regarded both as an artist and a teacher, Connaway moved to Maine in 1922 and took up permanent residence on Monhegan Island with his wife Louise in 1931. For 17 years, Connaway observed and painted the ocean and its many moods in the tradition of Winslow Homer and Rockwell Kent before moving to Vermont in 1947 where he lived out his life.

Born in Indiana, Connaway studied in New York City at the Arts Students League under William Merritt Chase before interrupting his studies to volunteer for service in the First World War. Upon discharge from the army, Connaway studied in Paris at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts before returning to the United States and settling in New England. Sticking to his guns as abstraction gained in popularity in the years after World War II, Connaway’s bold brushwork and subtle palate served as hallmarks of his unique style of masculine Impressionism.

Connaway enjoyed close to 90 one-man shows in his lifetime. He was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1933 and a full academician in 1943. His work was exhibited at the leading galleries of his day, including Macbeth, Vose, Kennedy, and Doll & Richards. In his own lifetime Connaway’s vision of the landscape of New England could be found hanging at the Art Institute of Chicago, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

H. Bolton Jones

H. Bolton Jones

H. Bolton Jones

H. Bolton Jones

H. Bolton Jones

H. Bolton Jones

H. Bolton Jones

H. Bolton Jones

Hugh Bolton Jones began his art studies at the Maryland Institute and was later a pupil of Horace Robbins. He first exhibited in 1874 at the National Academy of Design and was a regular contributor to their annual shows for the rest of his career. 

Beginning in 1876, Jones traveled and painted in Europe for four years. Although the majority of his activity centered on the artists' colony at Pont Aven in Brittany, he also sketched in Spain, England, Italy, and Morocco. While abroad, he exhibited in London, at the Paris Salon of 1878, and the Universal Exposition in Paris of the same year. 

Upon his return in 1880, Jones shared a studio with his younger brother, Francis, in New York. He became a member of the Society of American Artists in 1881, and was elected an Academician at the National Academy of Design in 1883.

A prolific painter represented in several major public collections in the eastern United States, Jones concentrated his finest efforts before the turn of the century on a series of landscapes reflecting the flat meadows of New Jersey and New England. He experimented with the palette and broken color of the Impressionists during the final decades of his life.