Winter 2006 no.59
15 The Dutch Dickensian Volume XXVI
critici:
In Dickens and His Illustrators (London:
1899), F. G. Kitton refers to Luke Fildes and
Marcus Stone not as artistic neophytes but as
"popular Royal Academicians" (ix), sugge
sting that by the end of the century their
work was held in high regard. Kitton merely
mentions Stone's Great Expectations pla
tes as being part of a series of seven sets the
younger Stone executed, the last of these
being the Frontispiece for the First Cheap
Edition of A Tale of Two Cities (1864).
Kitton alone out of all critics of illustrations
for Dickens has pronounced Stone's work as
"characterized by the very essential quality of
always telling their story" (202).
In another piece entitled "Dickens and His
Illustrators" (this appearing in Charles
Book I
afb: 1
afb: 2
Dickens 1812-1870: A Centenary
Volume, edited by E. W. F. Tomlin), modern
art critic Nicolas Bentley is not nearly so cha
ritable:
The defense of youth as an excuse for Stone's
inadequacy would be easier to sustain—he
was twenty-four when he illustrated Our
Mutual Friend—were it not that the talents
ofMillais, Holman Hunt, Richard Doyle,
Keene and others were considerably more
precocious than his own. The fact is that
whatever other talents he may have develo
ped—later in life he achieved some degree of
fame and fortune as a painter of maudlin
pot-boilers with a Regency flavouras an illus
trator he was no better than a hack. I Bentley 224
Bron: http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illus-
tration/mstone/bio.html.
