Alice Barber Stephens

Alice Barber Stephens (July 1, 1858 – July 13, 1932) was an American painter and engraver, best remembered for her illustrations. Her work regularly appeared in magazines such as ''Scribner's Monthly'', ''Harper's Weekly'', and ''The Ladies Home Journal''.

Early life and education

Alice Barber was born near Salem, New Jersey. She was the eighth of nine children born to Samuel Clayton Barber and Mary Owen, who were Quakers.

She attended local schools until she and her family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At age 15 she became a student at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art & Design), where she studied wood engraving.

She was admitted to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Among her fellow students at the Academy were Susan MacDowell, Frank Stephens, David Wilson Jordan, Lavinia Ebbinghausen, Thomas Anshutz, and Charles H. Stephens (whom she would marry). During this time, at the academy, she began to work with a variety of media, including black-and-white oils, ink washes, charcoal, full-color oils, and watercolors. In 1879, Eakins chose Stephens to illustrate an Academy classroom scene for ''Scribner's Monthly''. The resulting work, ''Women's Life Class'', was Stephens' first illustration credit.

New Woman

As educational opportunities were made more available in the nineteenth century, women artists became part of professional enterprises, including founding their own art associations. Artwork made by women was considered to be inferior by the art world, and to help overcome that stereotype women became "increasingly vocal and confident" in promoting women's work, and thus became part of the emerging image of the educated, modern and freer "New Woman".Laura R. Prieto.
At Home in the Studio: The Professionalization of Women Artists in America
'. Harvard University Press; 2001. . pp. 145–146. Artists then, "played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplifying this emerging type through their own lives."

One example of overcoming women stereotypes was Stephens' ''Woman in Business'' from 1897, which showed how women could focus not only in the home, but also in the economic world. As women began to work, their career choices broadened and illustration became a commendable occupation. People's ideas about education and art started to merge, and the outcome of a certain sensitivity to the arts began to be seen as uplifting and educational. By using illustration as a means to further their practices, women were able to fit the traditional gender role while still being active in their pursuits for the "New Woman". According to Rena Robey of ''Art Times'', "The early feminists began to leave the home to participate in clubs as moral and cultural guardians, focused on cleaning up cities and helping African Americans, impoverished women, working children, immigrants, and other previously ignored groups." Stephens took advantage of the explosion of illustration opportunities, including the opportunity to work from home.

Women's education

Throughout the period before the civil war, textile and other decorative work became acceptable occupations for those who aspired to be in the middle class. The Philadelphia School of Design for Women, founded in 1848 by Sarah Worthington Peter was first among a group of women's design schools established in the 1850s and 1860s; others appeared in Boston, New York, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati. It began as a charitable effort to train needy and deserving young women in textile and wallpaper design, wood engraving, and other salable artistic skills, providing a means for training women who needed wage work.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), established in 1805 by painter and scientist Charles Willson Peale, sculptor William Rush, and other artists and business leaders. Although they both taught art and design, PAFA and the Philadelphia School of Design For Women were not of equal social importance; the School of Design remained clearly lower in the city's cultural hierarchy, both because it was a women's school and because it was dedicated to commercial art instead of the fine arts. However, curriculum changes instituted in the late 1860s moved it closer to the artistic and social orbit derived from the European academic tradition, like the Academy of Fine Arts.

Career

Early career

In 1880, Stephens left the Academy to work full-time as an engraver. Her work was in high demand for popular illustrated magazines like '' Harper's,'' the oldest general-interest monthly magazine in America, and ''Century.'' While she frequently depicted domestic scenes featuring women and children, her illustrations defied categorization in a single genre. Stephens' connection with '' Harper's'' began in approximately 1882, as it printed the work of American artists and writers, such as Winslow Homer and Mark Twain. Much of her work was published in ''Harper's Young People'' (later known as ''Harper's Round Table'').

By the mid-1880s, however, Stephens' pace of work began to affect her health. She started to shift into pen-and-ink illustration. Her health continued to suffer, however. In an effort to recuperate, during 1886–1887, she traveled to Europe to sketch, study, and rest. In Paris, she studied at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi. She exhibited two works, a pastel study and engraving, at the Paris Salon in 1887.

Upon her return from Europe, Stephens resumed her illustration career with contributions to the ''Ladies' Home Journal'' and several book projects for Houghton Mifflin and Crowell publishers. Likely influenced by her European travels (and potentially by her husband), she also began painting in oil.

Stephens exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts and The Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

Educator

In 1888, she began to teach courses at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. Around the same time, with artist and educator Emily Sartain, she was one of the founders and officers of The Plastic Club of Philadelphia (1897), the oldest art club for women in continuous existence. During this period she also co-founded the Civic Club of Philadelphia.

Among Stephens' students at the School of Design was Charlotte Harding, who became a well-known illustrator. Harding also worked for ''Century'', ''Harper’s'' and other popular magazines at the time. Stephens later invited Harding to share her studio, located at 1004 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. The Chestnut Street studio became a meeting point for other artists, including students from the School of the Design and the Academy of Fine Arts.

Illustrator and painter

She illustrated Sarah Orne Jewett's ''An Every-Day Girl'' (1890). Her painting ''The Germania Orchestra at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts'' (1891) is now among the collection of the Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover, Delaware.
During the mid-1890s, following the development of the halftone process, Stephens started to use more varied media, including watercolor, for her illustrations. The increasing popularity of her illustrations for mystery stories earned her the title "Mistress of Mysteries."

In 1895, ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' noted when referring to Stephens that "there is scarcely any American illustrator better known to-day." That year, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's '' The Stark Munro Letters'' was published, which was illustrated by Stephens.

Throughout the year 1897, ''Ladies' Home Journal'' ran a series called "The American Woman," featuring six full-page illustrations by Stephens. The illustrations depicted the American Woman in six different settings: society, religion, home, summer, business, and motherhood. Notably, Stephens, who was both a career artist and the mother of a then-four-year-old son, chose to set three of the scenes inside the home, and three outside the home. She illustrated Mary E. Wilkins' ''The People of Our Neighborhood'', which was published in 1898.

In 1899, Stephens was invited to teach at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts