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Lois Mailou Jones (1905 – 1998) Lois Mailou Jones Lois Mailou Jones was born on November 3, 1905, in Boston, Massachusetts, where she was reared by parents who nurtured her early talent and ambition. Her father was one of the first black graduates of Boston's Suffolk Law School, and her mother was a hairdresser and talented milliner. Jones studied art at Boston High School of Practical Arts, the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, and the Designers Art School of Boston. Her family spent summers on Martha's Vineyard, where she painted watercolor sketches and enjoyed the encouragement of artists who summered there. She moved to Sedalia, North Carolina, to establish an art department at the Palmer Memorial Institute, a black preparatory school. Within two years, her students' exhibited work had attracted the attention of Howard University, which invited her to join the faculty in 1930. In the early 1930s Jones's art reflected the influences of African traditions. She designed African-style masks and in 1938 painted "Les Fétiches," which depicts masks in five distinct ethnic styles. A sabbatical year spent in Paris in 1937-38, during which time she studied painting at the Julian Academy, resulted in a dozen years of landscapes and figure studies. She painted outdoors, in the French tradition, rendering pastoral landscapes and street scenes, and contributed to Paris exhibitions. Relishing the freedom from racial prejudice she found in France, Jones summered there often. In 1953 she married the artist Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noël of Haiti, where she came to know many of the nation's artists. From this time she painted portraits and landscapes in brighter colors and with a more expressionistic style than she had previously employed. African influences reemerged in Jones's art in the late 1960s and early '70s, particularly after two extensive research tours of Africa. Her paintings became bold and abstract, and African design elements dominated. She taught at Howard University and elsewhere until 1977, although she continued to paint and to lecture thereafter. A retrospective of her work toured the United States in the 1980s and '90s. Lois Mailou Jones died on June 9, 1998, in Washington, D.C. Click to begin slide show.