Born in Baltimore in 1848, Hugh Bolton Jones attended the Maryland Institute and later worked in the studio of Horace Wolcott Robbins and Carey Smith in New York City. In 1876, Jones and his younger artist brother, Francis Coates Jones, traveled in Europe, studied briefly at the Academie Julien and spent time in London, France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain and North Africa. However, Jones spent most of his time at Pont Aven in Brittany painting plein air in the Barbizon manner. He completed landscapes that often included picturesque architecture and French peasants. Jones may have been attracted to this provincial village by Baltimore acquaintance, Thomas Hovenden, who was working there at the time. Unlike many of the American painters who went to Europe for their training, Hugh Bolton Jones, was already an accomplished landscapist in Baltimore and well known in New York City when he went abroad in 1876. Upon his return, Jones divided his time between New York City and Baltimore. He also kept a cottage in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts where he spent most of his summers. His landscapes were widely exhibited in the United States and important collectors such as Thomas B. Clarke and W. T. Walters of Baltimore owned his paintings. He exhibited and was an Associate at the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Brooklyn Art Association, the Boston Art Club and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (after only two years of study). While in Europe his works were shown in the Salon of 1878 in Paris, the Royal Academy (1880) and the Suffolk Street Gallery in London.