Alice Barber Stephens

1858-1932

American (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania )

The painter and illustrator Alice Barber Stephens was born in Salem, New Jersey. By 1873 she was enrolled at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art) and her wood cut illustrations appeared regularly in Scribner's Monthly. In 1876 she was one of the first women to enroll in the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and joined the women artists petitioning for more life drawing classes. She was committed to not only to build her own career, but also to contribute to developing paths for women artists.

Like many women artists, she married a fellow art classmate, Charles Hallowell Stephens (1855-1931). She continued to work as an illustrator, and her subjects ranged widely from the Romantic to Quaker meetinghouses to almshouse residents, demonstrating sensitivity to social issues. Over her 50-year career, she made illustrations for pay, as a commercial artist, engaged in the business of boosting sales, whether of magazines or products her illustrations advertised. With her most popular image Woman in Business, Barber Stephens pushed her contemporaries to see the broader ways that women were becoming more visible and central in the social and political world of America’s Gilded Age.

Alice Barber Stephens papers, 1884-1986, are held at Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Artist profile image: Alice Barber Stephens, ca. 1880-1910. ART TIMES Winter 2014.

Objects

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2023/01/23, photographed in Collection Storage for database
Stephens, Alice Barber 1858-1932
The Christening of the United States Cruiser New York
December 12, 1891
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