Stephens, Alice Barber (1858–1932)

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Stephens, Alice Barber (1858–1932)

American illustrator. Born on July 1, 1858, near Salem, New Jersey; died on July 13, 1932, in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania; daughter of Samuel Clayton Barber and Mary (Owen) Barber; educated at public schools; studied engraving at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women; studied life drawing and portraiture under Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; married Charles Hallowell Stephens, in June 1890; children: Daniel Owen Stephens (b. 1893).

Illustrated numerous books, including George Eliot's Middlemarch; illustrations appeared in a number of leading journals, including Century, Cosmopolitan and Ladies' Home Journal.

Born Alice Barber in 1858 on a farm near Salem, New Jersey, Alice Stephens was the daughter of Samuel Clayton Barber, who was of English Quaker ancestry; her mother Mary Owen Barber 's family had emigrated from Wales before the American Revolution. The eighth of nine children, Stephens attended the Philadelphia School of Design for Women while still at elementary school after her family moved to that city. There she learned the art of wood engraving and at age 15 began supporting herself, making engravings for Scribner's Monthly, Harper's Weekly and the Philadelphia periodical Woman's Words.

In 1876, Stephens began attending life drawing and portrait classes given by Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she met her future husband Charles Hallowell Stephens, a fellow student and future instructor at the academy. Alice soon became a sought-after book and magazine illustrator, working for such publications as Century, Cosmopolitan and Frank Leslie's Weekly. Her style was simple and striking, yet highly detailed, and she became accomplished in a wide variety of media, including oils, charcoal and watercolors. She traveled to Europe for the winter of 1886–87 and exhibited two works at the Paris Salon. While in Paris, she studied at the Académie Julian and Filippo Colarossi's school; she also made a sketching tour of Italy.

Back in the United States, Stephens became a regular illustrator for the Ladies' Home Journal and for a number of publishers, including Houghton Mifflin and Thomas Y. Crowell. She illustrated books by Louisa May Alcott , Margaret Deland and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as special editions of Longfellow's The Courtship of Miles Standish and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun.

The decade following her marriage in 1890 was the peak of Stephens' career. One of the best-known illustrators of her day, Stephens worked from her studio on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. She also painted in oil, winning prizes and medals for her work from the Pennsylvania Academy (for Portrait of a Boy, 1890), the Atlanta Exposition (1895), a women's exhibition at Earl's Court (for drawings for Middlemarch by George Eliot [Mary Anne Evans ] and John Halifax, Gentleman by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik , 1899), and the Paris Exposition (1900). Daniel Owen, her only child, was born in 1893.

After turning down an offer to teach life drawing at the Pennsylvania Academy—an unusual honor for a woman at that time—Stephens and her family spent 15 months abroad while she recovered from overwork and exhaustion. On their return in 1902, they moved to rural Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, into a converted stone barn named Thunderbird, where she spent her last 30 years. She continued painting landscapes and portraits for pleasure, illustrating with wash or charcoal, and teaching life drawing at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. In 1904, she served on the fine arts jury for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. With Emily Sartain , then director of the Philadelphia School, Stephens founded the Plastic Club and held a retrospective exhibition there in 1929.

Stephens was admired for her vigor as an artist and the way her dynamic and realistic drawings transcended the genre of commercial illustration. She died at Rose Valley at age 74, after a paralytic stroke, and was buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala-Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.