This is part one of a two-part story. Read Bishop Stone Part II.
By Mary Klein, Diocesan Archivist
The Maryland Diocesan Archives recently received the gift of a lovely oil portrait of our third bishop, William Murray Stone. “The Bishops’ Gallery”, located in the undercroft of the Cathedral of the Incarnation, displays oil portraits of deceased Bishops of Maryland, and the one depicting Bishop Stone, done by an anonymous painter, is not of the most professional quality. We will be happy to mount our newly acquired portrait, whose story is almost as interesting as the story of Bishop Stone himself.
Newly Acquired Portrait of Bishop Stone
The portrait was the gift of Mr. Parvin Stone Titus, by way of his daughter Ann Barnes of St. Mary’s County, MD. Mr. Titus is a direct descendant of Bishop Stone, through his second son John Wilmer Stone, a physician, who settled in Clinton, Louisiana, where the portrait hung for over a century. A handwritten, undated, note taped to the back of the portrait says, “His portrait, a charming and sympathetic likeness, comes at a late date when James and Rembrandt Peale were active, & is attributed to Charles Willson Peale in style alone.” This attribution is quite vague, since James Peale was Charles Willson Peale’s brother (1749-1831) and Rembrandt Peale was Charles’ son (1778-1860). The portrait is of William Murray Stone as a young clergyman, who looks to be in his late twenties, which would place the date of the portrait of c. 1804-1809, perhaps as a commemoration of his marriage to Anne Savage in 1809. Another note taped to the reverse of the portrait reads, “This copy was made by Alice P.S. Haeseler of Philadelphia, from the original portrait by Charles Willson Peale, now owned by Mrs. W. Coulbourn Brown, Philadelphia.”
Researching Alice Haeseler, I found that there is a home in Annapolis referred to as “The Alice P.S. Haeseler House”. Listed by the Maryland Historical Trust, this Queen Anne Victorian was built in 1887, as the home of Francis Joy Haeseler, and his bride Alice, and renovated in 1997 for the Naval Academy Alumni Association. Francis was an 1880 graduate of the Naval Academy and served as an instructor there from 1892-1895. He died in 1900 after mistakenly being treated for malaria instead of typhoid fever, and his widow received a pension from the Veteran’s Administration. The 1905-06 volume of the American Art Manual lists Alice P. Smith Haeseler as a painter living at 2006 Tioga Street in Philadelphia. Another brief mention says, “Alice Haeseler studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and was active in both Philadelphia and Washington D.C. at the turn of the century.” There is also a listing of Alice P.S. Haeseler of Annapolis, Maryland, attending the 1896 yearly Meeting of Friends in Philadelphia. The artist remains elusive, since there is so little known about her.
After Ann Barnes had turned over the portrait to the care of the archives, I began to look deeper into the life of Bishop Stone, and came across a folder (made by my late predecessor Garner Ranney) entitled “Stone, William Murray – portrait”. In that folder was a 1993 letter written by Ann Barnes’ mother, Barbara Titus, to Ranney enclosing a photograph of the portrait, with the following information, “The original was apparently last known to be in the possession of a Mr. M.C. Brown of Philadelphia, the widower of Anne Sudler Brown, a descendant of the Bishop’s daughter Anne Stone White. He apparently gave a photograph of it to Washington College, Chestertown, MD, but the original apparently remained with Mr. Brown.”
Garner Ranney’s correspondence with Dr. Gerald F. Vaughn in 1976 concerning the whereabouts of the original portrait of William Murray Stone was also included in the folder. (Vaughan had written an article in 1966 for the Historical Magazine of the Episcopal Church about Bishop Stone and his episcopacy.) On December 9, 1976, Dr. Vaughn had written to Ranney, “As to the Peale portrait, I was privileged to visit with Mrs. Brown around 1960 when she was 85 years old…She told me the portrait was in the possession of her family right there in Salisbury. It was not convenient for me to seek to see it then, and I had, of course, seen photographs of it, so never did try to see the portrait itself, though I wish I had.” He then gave the names of two women in the Stone family living in Salisbury, but I see no follow-up by either Garner Ranney or Dr. Vaughn.
Wherever the original portrait of Bishop Stone is presently located, a photograph of the portrait (or of its copy) was given to Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, the alma mater of Bishop Stone, and hung in the library. On the cover of the December 1927-January 1928, Washington College Bulletin, Early Alumni Number is a photograph of the portrait, and inside there is a brief biography of Bishop Stone. The final paragraph reads, “The photograph of Bishop Stone was presented by Mr. W. Colbourn Brown, class of 1895, whose wife is a descendant of the Bishop. The original portrait from which the photograph was made was painted by Charles Willson Peale, a native of Chestertown and a famous American portrait painter. The original is in Mr. Brown’s possession.” So again, the Charles Willson Peale attribution is given.
We may never know where the original portrait now is, and whether or not it is by Charles Willson Peale, but the lovely portrait of a young Bishop William Murray Stone now hangs in our “Bishops’ Gallery”.
Look for a brief biography of Bishop Stone in the next eNews.
Washington College Bulletin, Early Alumni Number, December 1927 – January 1928 (click image to read full article)