Art

Morning on a Southern Plantation, 1910
Alice Barber Stephens (1858-1932)

One of the best-known illustrators of her generation, Alice Barber Stephens grew up in Philadelphia, and received her initial art instruction at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art). While still in her teens, she mastered the mechanical processes involved in printing, and began supporting herself by selling wood engravings to Scribner’s Monthly and other periodicals. Although encouraged by her parents to become a full-time engraver, Stephens “wanted to work in color” (Brown, p. 8). In 1876 she transferred to the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts, and entered the classroom of Thomas Eakins, who was then beginning his controversial first year at the school. Under his tutelage, she turned to illustration, and her works in charcoal, oil, watercolor, and other media became regular features in Century, Cosmopolitan, Frank Leslie’s Weekly, and the Harper publications. His influence on Stephens was so strong that years later Gordon Hendricks observed: “some of … [her] work “is scarcely distinguishable from that of Eakins” (quoted in Brown, 13).

Stephens’ painting, Female Life Class (1879; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) was one of the earliest portrayals of women artists working from the nude. Commissioned by the Academy, Female Life Class brought positive attention to the artist and the institution when it was reproduced in Scribner’s in 1879. In the late 1880s, Stephens studied briefly at the Academie Julien in Paris and sketched in the Italian countryside. During her stay, she adopted a lighter palette, and a softer, more impressionist style. She painted several richly colored landscapes of Italy, and exhibited at the Paris Salon. On her return to Philadelphia, she married Charles Stephens, an instructor at the Academy, and began a successful career as a book illustrator. In addition to creating the illustrations for works by Louisa May Alcott, Bret Harte, and Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephens provided the images for a special edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun, a favorite travel guide to Rome for Victorian tourists. They were considered the finest book illustrations she ever produced, and the original paintings won a bronze medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle.

Stephens’ interest in architecture is revealed in other works of the early twentieth century, such as Morning on a Southern Plantation, painted in 1912. By that year, the Stephens’s had moved to Rose Valley, an Arts and Crafts community within commuting distance of Philadelphia, where most of the residents worked. The move was prompted by their friendship with its founder, the architect William Price, who converted a stone barn into a house and studios for them. There, in addition to her commercial work, Stephens painted figurative works and landscapes, often incorporating architectural motifs into her scenes.  Nancy Rivard Shaw

Sources:

Brown, Ann Barton. Alice Barber Stephens: A Pioneer Woman Illustrator. Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania: Brandywine River Museum, 1984.

Rubinstein, Charlotte Streifer. American Women Artists from Early Indian Times to the Present.  Boston: G. K. Hall and Co., 1982, pp. 145-146.

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