"The Return" (1881) by Marcus Stone (1840−1921)

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The Return

Marcus Stone (1840−1921)

1891

Oil on canvas

Source: the 1893 The Magazine of Art

“It is one of the characteristics of Mr. Marcus Stone that, be his subject humorous or tender, he never fails to create exactly the impression on the general pubic that he intended when he first intended when he conceived his composition. When “The Return” was exhibited at the Royal Academy two years ago, it attracted the full share of popular attention which is invariably the reward of Mr. Stone’s work. It gladdened the great mass of those whom it is the artist’s delight to please with graceful scenes of lover’s loves — their quarrels and reconciliations, their wooings and jealousies, their joys and disappointments. Mr. Stone’s little dramas are always delicately imagined. High comedy is in them, but never tragedy; emotion but never passion. Refines and graceful — as becomes the pretty costume-period which the painter most affects (in theatrical language, the “powder-period”) — their story gently forces itself on the mind of the spectator without, on the one hand, impelling him to sudden laughter, or, on the other, with any approach to violence.” [continued below]

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Commentary from The Magazine of Art

Of Mr. Stone’s lighter mood “The Return” is a good example. “My own view of the story,” he writes, “is this: the beloved one has been absent for a weary length of time, and returns unexpectedly to find his dear mournfully thinking of him in the old trysting-place.” As in all the pictures of Mr. Marcus Stone, the story is clearly lain upon the canvas, and is intelligible to every beholder.

Mr. Stone has now for some years painted practically the same key, and the same tone of amiable sentiment has prevailed. But it must be remembered that, in truth, he is an artist of wide range, whose prolific pencil had dome much admirable work, before the black-and-white illustrator of Dickens and the painter of many a vigorous historical piece executed in strong colour, sought in the Empire period, and in pleasantly amorous strain, the medium of his artistic message to the people.

Bibliography

“The Return.” The Magazine of Art 16 (1893): 19. Internet Archive online version of a copy in the library of University of Toronto. 23 January 2018.

Created 23 January 2018