William Oliver Stone

The list of deceased members contains the names in the order of their loss, of Hays, Sherwood, Strong, Gaillard, Tillman, Stone, Kemble, Hegeman, Turney and Blodgett. The memorial notices, prepared and presented by your direction, express our appreciation of those we have lost with an earnestness of feeling and an appropriateness of phrase to which your Board can have nothing to add.

Augustus R. Macdonough
1876 Century Association Reports

Mr. William Oliver Stone was a native of Derby, in Connecticut. His taste for art was exhibited in boyhood, but he had, at first, only few opportunities for its scientific study. He had little early training but such as he received from Mr. Joslyn, an artist of local celebrity in New Haven. He struggled resolutely against the res angusta domi until all obstacles were overcome, and he was enabled to devote his life to his profession. Mr. Ehninger, his nearest friend, and from intimate association best able to appreciate his worth, has related with sufficient fullness Mr. Stone’s resolution and self-sacrifice amid his early privations, in the discharge of filial duty. The recital increases the respect which is due to his memory.

Mr. Stone passed most of his professional life in New York, and gained a high rank among its artists. He became an Associate of the National Academy of Design, then in due time an Academician, and sustained during several years some of its most honorable and responsible trusts. His works display conscientious care in execution. His mastery of color, his power of expressing character in its more refined exhibitions, his delicate appreciation of feminine grace and beauty, will preserve his memory among the artists of New York.

Mr. Stone was for sixteen years a member of the Century, and bore his part of the labors of its offices and committees. His social qualities were of a high order. His conversational powers were invigorated by wide experience and observation. He had large store of information, a keen sense of honor and justice and right. Those who knew him longest will preserve most pleasant remembrance of his companionship, and will most deeply regret that he passed away before he had attained the full development of his artistic powers.

Henry C. Dorr, Henry R. Winthrop, and Augustus R. Macdonough
1875 Century Association Memorial Notices