# Loïs Mailou Jones artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/lois-mailou-jones/
Profile generated: 2026-08-19T15:43:30.723Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Nationality: American
- Movements: Harlem Renaissance
- Common media: Painting, Watercolor, Design and illustration, Works on paper and prints

## Portrait

![Loïs Mailou Jones](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Lois_Jones%2C_artist_and_teacher_-_NARA_-_559227.jpg/1280px-Lois_Jones%2C_artist_and_teacher_-_NARA_-_559227.jpg)
Unknown author Unknown author or not provided · Public domain
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lois_Jones,_artist_and_teacher_-_NARA_-_559227.jpg

## About Loïs Mailou Jones

Loïs Mailou Jones (1905–1998) was an American painter, designer, illustrator, and educator whose long career is often discussed in relation to the Harlem Renaissance. Her practice extended across fine art, design, illustration, and teaching, while international experience widened the cultural and visual contexts of her work. Museum records demonstrate a varied approach to painting and works on paper: the National Gallery of Art presents both a loosely painted coastal landscape from 1940 and a vivid 1981 street scene executed in watercolor. Accounts of her career also emphasize her engagement with African and Caribbean cultures and her experience as a Black expatriate artist in Paris. Collectors may therefore encounter works from substantially different phases, with changes in medium, date, style, and subject. Jones's presence in museum collections and international authority files also makes accurate identity matching important, particularly because records may use an unaccented version of her name or married-name variants.

## Common works and media

Paintings and watercolors are the clearest institutionally documented work types associated with Jones. Landscapes and populated street or community scenes appear among the National Gallery of Art's selected works. Auction records also group works on paper and prints under her name, while biographical sources document activity in design and illustration. Broader auction categories include mixed media, sculpture, decorative art, and editions, but those classifications should be checked against each lot's description, images, attribution, and materials before being treated as characteristic of her practice.

## Market and appraisal context

Public auction records for Loïs Mailou Jones span paintings, works on paper, prints, and several broader mixed-media or edition categories. A useful comparison should match the prospective work as closely as possible by medium, dimensions, date, subject, condition, and career period. Signature and inscription details, edition information, attribution confidence, provenance, exhibition history, restoration, and catalogue references can also affect how a lot compares with recorded sales. Broad artist-level statistics should not be treated as a price prediction. Private transactions, incomplete auction feeds, reporting conventions, and later attribution changes may be absent, so appraisal conclusions should be based on verified lot-level evidence and recent comparable public sales.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine researched identity and authority records with matched public auction data. When available, that evidence includes auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, images, and comparable lots; private sales and incomplete feeds may not be represented.

## Sources

- National Gallery of Art: https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.38965.html
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3258676
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/95897605/
- IdRef: https://www.idref.fr/191676659
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500034910
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/79417969/
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_Mailou_Jones
- Appraisily: https://appraisily.com/artist/lois-mailou-jones/