Born and raised in Melbourne, Jones studied painting at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School under the guidance of George Folingsby from 1883 to 1889. He was an early member of both the Box Hill artists' camp, founded in 1885, and the Heidelberg artists' camp, where he painted the Australian landscape en plein air using impressionist techniques alongside artists such as Arthur Streeton and Charles Conder. During this period, he was also part of the Buonarotti Club, one of Melbourne's leading bohemian arts groups of the mid-1880s.
Streeton gifted several of his Heidelberg works to Jones, including Impression for Golden Summer (1888), which became the basis for Jones's iconic landscape Golden Summer, Eaglemont (1889). Jones later lent Impression for Golden Summer to the landmark 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition of 1889. In the following year, both Jones and Streeton submitted works from the Heidelberg School to the Victorian Artists Society’s winter show. This exhibition attracted the attention of trustees from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, who, impressed by the pair's talent, purchased Jones's The Dry Season and Streeton’s An Australian Gloaming. These acquisitions marked some of the first Heidelberg School works to enter a public collection. The Dry Season was later included in the 1898 Exhibition of Australian Art in London, alongside other works by Jones.
In the later years of his life, Jones moved to Sydney, where he continued to paint, predominantly in watercolour. He passed away at North Sydney Hospital on 13 December 1927 after a brief illness.