William Oliver Stone was an American portrait painter. For ten years he anually exhibited his works National Academy of Design.
Background
William was born on September 26, 1830 at Derby, Connecticut, United States, the youngest of three children of Frederick William and Ellen (Stone) Stone. He was a descendant of William Stone who emigrated from England in the company of William Leete and settled in Guilford, Connecticut, in 1639. His grandfather, Leman Stone, was an important citizen of Derby, whose mansion house, the "Castle, " in what is now East Derby, near the confluence of the Housatonic and Naugatuck rivers, served both as residence and warehouse, the dock at the waterside enabling vessels from the West Indies to discharge their cargoes and store them in this building.
Education
William Oliver received his early education in the Derby public schools. He became a pupil of Nathaniel Jocelyn of New Haven in the late forties.
Career
After studies he went to New York in 1854, and soon became a popular and successful portraitist. Later he became an Academician and exhibited regularly at the National Academy of Design from then until the time of his death. Occasionally he sent portraits to the Royal Academy exhibitions in London, where they were well hung. Though his most successful portraits were those of women and children, "rich in color and graceful in treatment", he was always desirous of painting portraits of men and "expected to produce some notable masterpieces in this respect, " an ambition that was fairly fulfilled.
His portrait of Miss Rawle has been shown at the Metropolitan Museum, New York. The New York Historical Society owns his portrait of Thomas Jefferson Bryan; the Union Club, New York, that of Howell L. Williams, and the National Academy of Design that of John Whetton Ehninger. Among his other subjects were Cyrus West Field, the Rev. Henry Anthon, William Wilson Corcoran, the founder of the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, Bishop Abram Newkirk Littlejohn of Long Island, and Bishop William Ingraham Kip of California.
Though he was a prolific painter and in one year sent nine pictures to the Academy, his workmanship was of a distinctly superior order. In certain examples it reminds one not a little of the rugged style and admirable modeling of some of Sir Henry Raeburn's heads. Considering his popularity and the number of his works, it is surprising that he is among the least known of the portrait painters of his day.
He died in Newport, Rhod Island, at the age of forty-five.
Achievements
William Oliver Stone became a successful portrait painter, owner of the studio in New York. His best portrait of a man was generally considered to be that of the editor of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett, while one of his most charming portraits of women was that of Mrs. Hoey.
Membership
He became an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1856, and full member in 1859.
Connections
He was married early, before leaving his native place, and had one daughter, Louise, who married a man named Ingalls and lived with her father.
