Margaret Stones was distinguished for her botanical art. She undertook a scholarship in industrial art at Swinburne Technical College, Victoria 1936 – 1938. In 1942, as part of the war effort she began nursing at the Epworth Hospital in Richmond while she also attended night classes at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School.
Between 1946 and 1950, despite a serious illness she held four commercial exhibitions- three at Georges in Melbourne, starting in December 1946 and a further show in Sydney.
From 1948 to 1950, she joined the University of Melbourne Botany school summer expeditions to the Bogong High Plains in Victoria.
Stones relocated to England in 1952, where she worked independently until 1981, collaborating with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and various botanical institutions and contributed to Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, for which she served as principal artist from 1956 to 1981.
In 1957 she was commissioned by the Post Master General’s Department in Canberra to prepare a set of floral designs for Australian stamps.
A major undertaking from 1967 to 1978 was her illustrating “The Endemic Flora of Tasmania” in six volumes for Tasmanian botanist Dr. Winifrid Curtis who noted Stones’s remarkable botanical knowledge, and praised her ability to “intuitively choose the right sections for accurate taxonomical classification.” A genus was named after her, “Stonesia,” and a Tasmanian species was named “Stonesiella.” Further recognitions followed, including the prestigious Veitch Silver Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society in London in 1976, and in 1977, she was awarded the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).
From 1977 to 1987, Stones embarked on a ten-year contract to draw Louisiana Flora, then in 1979, she was represented in the “Flowers in Art from East and West” exhibition at the British Museum in London as one of only seven contemporary artists featured, and in the following years she exhibited at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, USA.
In 1985 the Louisiana State Museum featured her work and she was bestowed an Honorary Doctor of Science (DSc (Hon)) from Louisiana State University in 1986, the Veitch Gold Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society in London, and in 1987 the Eloise Payne Luquer Medal, acknowledging her special artistic achievement in the field of botany, awarded by the Garden Club of America. A Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1988, recognised her service to art as an illustrator of botanical specimens and in 1989, she was awarded the Doctor of Science (honoris causa) (HonDSc) by the University of Melbourne.
In 1991 she exhibited 90 drawings of Louisiana Flora at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Stones’ association with the National Gallery of Victoria spans the whole of her working career. The first drawing to be acquired for the collection was bought at the time of her first solo exhibition in 1946, with a further two being purchased from her show at Grosvenor Galleries in 1948, while her most recent drawings were purchased in 1996 through donations by a private benefactor
