The Times Saturday 26/3/1921.

DEATH OF MR MARCUS STONE RA. A FRIEND OF DICKENS.

We regret to announce the death of Mr Marcus Stone RA, which took place at his home in Melbury Road, Kensington. He had been in failing health for the last few years. His wife had predeceased him, and he left no issue.The death of Mr Stone removes a characteristic painter of the Victorian School, whose works, it used to be affirmed were to be seen in every print-sellers shop window in Europe.

Born in 1840, Marcus Stone was the son of Frank Stone ARA, himself an able painter, and was the cherished friend of Charles Dickens and his circle, and the acquaintance of many famous and interesting men of the day. The bright and precocious boy was thrust, even before he entered his teens, into this delightful company, who spoilt and encouraged him and looked with interest at his early artistic efforts. Chief of these friends was Dickens, who claimed from the little fellow a spirited sketch of Poor Jo on which he was engaged, and who, a few years later, urged Longman, the publisher, to secure the young man's services as illustrator. "He is an admirable draughtsman" wrote Dickens, who had a keen and just appreciation of artistic capacity, " he has a most dextrous hand, a charming sense of grace and beauty, and a capital power of observation," advising him to specialise in that line. The praise, even at that time, was not undeserved. Although Marcus Stone did not follow-up the recommendation he became more than ever a welcome guest at Gadshill. It was, then, under the aegis of Charles Dickens that Marcus Stone began his career as an illustrator in black and white. As early as 1861 he drew the frontispiece for "Little Dorrit" and in the following year he was called upon to illustrate "Our Mutual Friend" and those drawings, together with his contributions to London Society, Cornhill, and The Sunday Magazine, and other remarkable pages noteworthy among the wood-engravings of the sixties displayed a freedom of execution having little in common with Stone's handling of the brush. The artist himself regarded them with modified satisfaction; he considered then to be immature, and turned to colour and devoted himself solely to painting. If his claim be well-founded, to him draughtsmen were indebted for the innovation of illustrations being drawn upon paper, then photographed onto the block for the engraver to cut, thus abolishing the wasteful practice of drawing on the wood itself.

PICTORIAL STORY-TELLING

Mr Stone's pretty talent for pictorial story telling, so much esteemed in his day, was first devoted to domestic genre and historical anecdote, English and French, with mildly dramatic scenes inspired by the English poets, especially such as were tenderly emotional and well restrained in passion. Mr Stone would invariably contrive his subjects so that they sprang at a glance to the eye and mind of the spectator and made an instant and graceful appeal with unerring directness. In this category were his earliest pictures "Rest" 1858, "Silent Pleading" 1859, "The Sword of the Lord" 1860, "Claudio deceived by Don Juan" 1860. About the year of 1860 he changed his class of subject, and in some measure his style, for the pictures of pure sentiment by which he made himself famous, and in which their almost feminine qualities of grace and elegance took the general public by storm. Pictures such as "Ily'en toujours un autre" (Chantry Bequest), "In Love, A Honeymoon, A Passing Cloud, A Peacemaker, Two's Company Three's None, Her First Sorrow" and the like.

UNIQUE ACADEMY RECORD

In spite of the limitations and uneventfullness of his own method Mr Marcus Stone's sympathies in art were broad and his knowledge of foreign schools was wide beyond what is common among painters of his day. He was an acute critic, strong in his opinions, and a militant Radical, alike in both politics and religion. His life was a curiously successful one, as success is sometimes measured, and it may be regarded as unique in its way; from his first appearance on the walls of the Royal Academy, when he was eighteen, he never to the end missed a single exhibition-he never had a picture rejected-and while he was still painting he never was "hung" but on the line-and every picture had been sold before it was seen. Little wonder he scarcely exhibited a dozen pictures at other institutions. Marcus Stone was a man of distinguished and pleasing appearance and manner, a good talker, a clever phrase-maker, and an omniverous reader. His memory was prodigious, and his claim that he could re-hang from memory most Royal Academy Exhibitions of his time was hardly a vain one, and he never forgot a picture, or the painter of it once seen.

He was elected ARA in 1877, and RA in 1887. In the "Ode to the Arts Club" a Royal Academy Exhibition night as celebrated at the club in 1892 Marcus Stone was thus presented: Marcus Apollo Belvedere Stone Stands there erect in all his glory shown; A subtle kerchief special grace imparts, Fatal to feline as to female hearts, No hand's more cunning with a brush to trace The lines of beauty upon a virgin's face; Or mark the passion that her breast must fill. If Sylvia's Lord bends not to Sylvia's will, Nor are the dreaded fates to him unkind- Buyers abound; for in his scenes they find A sunset suggestion of their youthful loves- And soft green foliage of our English Groves. The portrait here drawn was accepted as true by the boon companions for whom the poem was written; Marcus Stone, lover of arts and cats, devotee of gentlemanly Attire, and his own elegance and refinement lived for them in the genial lines which they cordially applauded. The funeral service will be held at St Mary Abbots Kensington at 11 o'clock on Tuesday.

MY COMMENTS

I had not realised that Marcus Stone's work was so popular until researching him for the short biography on my web site, and locating this obituary. His pictures are often set in the Regency, when the fashions for both men and women were regarded by the Victorians (rightly), as being far more elegant than their own. Stone's fancy pictures are well-observed and painted, and his characterisation of their subjects is excellent, as is his rendering of light and shade and vegetation. I have been amused to learn that the painter of such pictures was such an iconoclast, political radical, and religious freethinker. PHR. 1/7/2002.