Prolific sculptor, painter, illustrator, designer and lecturer, born in Glossop, Derbyshire, who attended Manchester Regional College of Art, 1951–2. In 1952 he emigrated with his parents to New Zealand, working at sculpture and drawing between jobs, then attended Auckland Teachers’ College, 1959–61. From 1963 Tony Stones was employed by Television New Zealand, initially as a set designer, latterly as head of design, 1978–83, while continuing to sculpt. In 1983 Stones returned to England, as a full-time sculptor-painter living in Oxford for many years, although latterly he was based in Lechlade on Thames, Gloucestershire. He was president of the SPS, a fellow of the RBS, a member of the Sculptors’ Society of Ireland and of the common room, Wolfson College, Oxford.
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Stones won a Henry Moore Foundation Research Grant, 1989, a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship in Sculpture, 1992, and in 1996 a Derby Civic Society Special Award for his equestrian statue of Bonnie Prince Charlie. It was one of dozens of commemorative bronze statues, reliefs, equestrian bronze statues, portrait bronzes and trophies completed by Stones. These included Lord Freyberg, VC, Freyberg Place, Auckland, 1978; Jean Batten, Auckland International Airport, 1989; Captain Cook, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 1993, and Cook’s Landing Place, Gisborne, 1994; Rodin, private collection, Chicago, America, 1998; and Arthur Brooke, founder of Brooke Bond Tea, Trafford Centre, Manchester, 1999. Among his many portrait bronzes were Liam O’Flaherty, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; John Piper, Reading Civic Centre; John Wain and Philip Larkin, both for St John’s College, Oxford; Ben Kingsley, The Theatre Museum, Stratford-upon-Avon; and Orpheus & Eurydice and King & Queen for Royal Norwegian Cruise Lines. His seven statues of Pacific explorers were exhibited at Expo ’92 in Seville, Spain, in 1992. In 1994 there was a Stones retrospective at Southland Museum and Art Gallery, Invercargill, New Zealand. Several of Stones’s sculptures are on permanent show at the National Museum in Wellington. Century Galleries, Henley-on-Thames, showed his rowing and river paintings.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)
