Woman hoeing crops, colored pencil drawing, signed Alice Barber Stephens

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Alice Barber Stephens, better known as an illustrator for magazines like Harper's, turned her pencil toward rural labor in this drawing of a woman working a hoe among growing crops. The figure is the focus rather than the farmstead around her, which was a shift for an artist whose reputation rested largely on book and periodical illustration. Stephens, a Philadelphia-based artist active from the late 1800s into the early 1900s, often depicted women in domestic and everyday settings, so a field worker stands out in her body of work. The colored pencil technique gives the scene a soft, close texture worth looking at closely.

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