Marcus Stone

About Marcus Stone

Marcus Stone (4 July 1840 to 24 March 1921) was an English painter and book illustrator, born in London, who drew the original illustrations for Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend (1864 to 1865) and later became a Royal Academician.

Stone was taught by his father, the painter Frank Stone ARA, a close friend of Dickens, and showed at the Royal Academy before he was 18. Frank Stone died in 1859, and Dickens, his friend and executor, recommended the son to his publishers. Stone drew the plates for the Illustrated Library Edition of Great Expectations (Chapman and Hall, 1862) and then illustrated the monthly parts of Our Mutual Friend, issued from May 1864 to November 1865. He also drew plates for Dickens's American Notes, Pictures from Italy, A Child's History of England (shared with James Mahoney) and The Uncommercial Traveller, and for Anthony Trollope's He Knew He Was Right (Strahan, 1869).

He then turned mainly to painting, at first historical subjects and later sentimental genre scenes, such as In Love (1888). He was elected ARA in 1877 and RA in 1887. From 1877 until his death he lived at 8 Melbury Road, Holland Park, in a house designed by Richard Norman Shaw; English Heritage marked it with a blue plaque in 1994.

For collectors

Stone's Dickens work first appeared in the monthly parts of Our Mutual Friend, which include a monthly wrapper credited to him, and in the 1862 Illustrated Library Edition of Great Expectations. The original three-volume Great Expectations of 1861 is not listed among his illustrated books, so it should not be expected to carry his plates.