Receiving his initial instruction in drawing at Baltimore's Maryland Institute, Hugh Bolton Jones traveled to New York City in 1865 to study briefly with Horace Robbins. For the next twelve years, he produced landscapes in his native city, making frequent trips to New York. In 1868, he was joined by his friend, Thomas Hovenden, who set up a studio in the Jones' Baltimore home. Although he had made a short European trip in 1870, it wasn't until 1877 that Jones left the United States to pursue serious study in France. With his younger brother, Francis, he traveled to Pont-Aven after paying a visit to Edwin Austin Abbey at his London residence. Jones enjoyed the Pont-Aven community; among the artists gathered there was his friend Hovenden. He preferred Brittany to Paris, but he also spent time exploring Spain and Morocco.
Upon his return to New York in 1881, Jones was elected to the Society of American Artists. Like many members of that organization, he took a studio in the new Sherwood Building. His brother joined him in his studio, and the two lived together in several New York artist residences until the death of the elder Jones. He worked in several media, contributing to the first exhibition of the Society of Painters in Pastel in 1884 and taking on illustration work. An avid woodcarver, he made his own frames and executed much of the interior decoration of his final showpiece studio at 33 W. 67th St. His summers were spent in South Egremont, Massachusetts.
Jones's regular contributions to Academy Annuals date from before his European stay, and following his election, he served a number of years on the Council in the 1890s and the early twentieth century. His landscapes were distinctive, adopting much of the hardened detail of earlier American landscape painters, but employing smaller, more intimate settings in keeping with late-century ideals. Jones became seriously ill in 1926 and died a year later.