Marland O'Berry Stone was born April 20, 1895 in Cary, North Carolina. His father, Adolphus E. Stone, was born 1870 in North Carolina. His mother, Laura E. Stone, was born 1874 in Georgia. His parents married in 1894. He was their first born. His younger sister Thelma was born in 1898. His father was a farmer. They lived on his father's family farm along with his grandfather, Mark P. Stone, born 1823 in North Carolina.
In 1900 his mother died during a failed delivery of their third child. His widowed father was not able to care for the two infant children, so he moved to his older brother's home on Raleigh Road in Durham, NC, where he worked as a foreman in a lumber mill.
He graduated high school in Durham in 1915. Afterwards he attended Elon College in North Carolina and became interested in studying art, although he was the only boy in the class.
He developed a reputation for drawing idealized women, and was influenced by the popular Gibson girl of Charles Dana Gibson.
On September 20, 1917 he enlisted in the Army and served during the Great War. He was honorably discharged on June 20, 1919.
In 1920 he lodged at a boarding house at 258 West 55th Street, only two blocks away from the Art Students League of New York on 215 West 57th Street, where he studied with George Bridgman and Frank Dumont.
During the 1920s he drew pastel portraits of glamorous movie stars and romantic women for slick magazines, such as Modern Priscilla, Motion Picture, Silver Screen, and The Saturday Evening Post.
He married Helen Stone, who was born October 31, 1901 in Englewood, New Jersey.
On November 20, 1931 he moved to 48 West 12th Street.
On November 23, 1935 he moved to 14 West 10th Street.
During WWII he listed his employer as Periodical House of 67 West 44th Street in NYC.
He painted covers for romance pulp magazines, such as All Story Love, Love Short Stories, New Love, Fifteen Love Stories, and Love Novels. He never signed his work for the pulp magazines, in order to preserve his reputation for better paying opportunities. Marland Stone's work for pulp magazines was only identified in 2012 thanks to an insightful discovery by pulp scholar Randy Vanderbeek of a printed credit on the contents page of a 1954 issue of All Story Love by Popular Publications.
During the 1950s he illustrated magazine and newspaper advertisements as well as The American Weekly Sunday Supplement Magazine.
From 1959 to 1961 he and Ray Prohaska (1901-1981), an influential art teacher and illustrator of Woman's Home Companion, curated three consecutive annual exhibitions on International themes at the prestigious Guild Hall Art Museum in East Hampton, NY.
Marland O. Stone died at the age of seventy-nine in East Hampton, NY, on January 11, 1975.
© David Saunders 2012 |
