STONEY, Margaret 'Tony'

1897 - 1983

As Margaret Naomi Stoney she was born at Ipswich on 4 September 1897, youngest of the three children of Edward Duncan Stoney (1868-8 February 1898), civil engineer, and his wife Ellen Naomi Pope (1869-4 January 1964), eldest daughter of George Harrison Pope (1841-1917) of Upper Norwood, who married at Granard Church, Putney, London on 7 September 1892. Her 29-year-old father died of pleurisy and pneumonia, at 19 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich in 1898 and in 1911 42-year-old Ellen, a widow who was born at St Mary, Kent, was living at 23 Arlington Road, Eastbourne with her mother-in-law Anne Elizabeth Stoney, with children Francis Geoge Duncan 17, Catherine Ruth 16 and Margaret Naomi 13, they had three indoor servants. Margaret's brother Francis went to work for Ipswich engineers Ransomes & Rapier but as Lieut. Francis Stoney was killed in action on 25 August 1916. In 1921 both Ruth and Margaret were toy makers living on the South Coast, but by 1937, Margaret was a student at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing and was given the nickname of 'Tony Stoney'. A quote by Maggi Hambling when asked about her strong and continuing interest in painting animals, Hambling recalled that 'the first exhibition that she ever attended, at the age of about four or five [around 1950], was of paintings of bulls. The exhibition was held in a first-floor room of a public house in her hometown of Hadleigh, Suffolk. She was taken by her mother and remembered being 'amazed' by these paintings of bulls. The painter was 'Tony' Stoney, a local farmer, who had painted portraits of bulls for her farming friends.' In 1939 Stoney was a 'famer, mixed and dairy producer' at Spider Hall, Raydon, Hadleigh, Suffolk living with her sister Catherine Ruth Stoney (18 December 1894-18 April 1983) 'domestic duties', both were unmarried. Margaret Naomi Stoney died at Stoney Hall, Reydon, Hadleigh on 11 May 1983.

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Works by This Artist