Jonathan Janson was born in South River, New Jersey in 1950. He received a degree in Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island in 1972 and participated in the European Honors Program, in Rome, Italy 1972. Following a brief stay in the United States he returned to Rome where he has lived and worked.

His paintings have been shown in important international galleries such O.K. Harris Works of Art and in major art museums.

He returns regularly to the United States and is the author of a number of web sites concerning the seventeenth-century painting master Johannes Vermeer. He paints in oils (domestic interiors) and in watercolors (the American surban landscape)