Jackson JSON List with Object Type

There's no built-in way to do this. You'll have to write your own JsonSerializer. Something like

class ModelSerializer extends JsonSerializer<List<Model>> {

    @Override
    public void serialize(List<Model> value, JsonGenerator jgen,
            SerializerProvider provider) throws IOException {
        jgen.writeStartArray();
        for (Model model : value) {
            jgen.writeStartObject();
            jgen.writeObjectField("model", model);
            jgen.writeEndObject();    
        }
        jgen.writeEndArray();
    }

}

and then annotate the models field so that it uses it

@JsonSerialize(using = ModelSerializer.class)
private List<Model> models;

This would serialize as

{
    "status": "success",
    "models": [
        {
            "model": {
                "id": 1,
                "color": "red"
            }
        },
        {
            "model": {
                "id": 2,
                "color": "green"
            }
        }
    ]
}

If you're both serializing and deserializing this, you'll need a custom deserializer as well.

This is an oldish question, But there is an arguably more idiomatic way of implementing this (I'm using jackson-databind:2.8.8):

Define a ModelSerializer (That extends StdSerializer as recommended by Jackson) that prints your model how you like and use the @JsonSerialize(contentUsing = ...) over your collection type:

class ModelSerializer extends StdSerializer<Model> {

    public ModelSerializer(){this(null);}
    public ModelSerializer(Class<Model> t){super(t);} // sets `handledType` to the provided class

    @Override
    public void serialize(List<Model> value, JsonGenerator jgen,
            SerializerProvider provider) throws IOException,
            JsonProcessingException {
        jgen.writeStartObject();
        jgen.writeObjectField("model", value);
        jgen.writeEndObject();
    }
}

Meanwhile, in another file:

class SomethingWithModels {
    // ...
    @JsonSerialize(contentUsing = ModelSerializer.class)
    private Collection<Model> models;
    // ...
}

Now you aren't bound to just Lists of models but may apply this to Collections, Sets, Native []s and even the values of Maps.