Alice Barber Stephens (July 1, 1858 - July 13, 1932) was an American painter and engraver, best remembered for her illustrations.
She was born on a farm in Salem, New Jersey, and attended local schools. Her Quaker family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and at age 15 she became a student at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art). She entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1876, where she studied under Thomas Eakins. She later studied at the Drexel Institute under Howard Pyle, and in Paris at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi. She exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1887.[1]
In 1890, she married Charles H. Stephens (1855?-1931), an instructor at PAFA. They had one son, D. Owen Stephens (1894–1937), who also became an artist. The Stephenses had architect Will Price convert a stone barn in the utopian community of Rose Valley, Pennsylvania into "Thunderbird Lodge" (1904), a sprawling house that contained studios for both of them.[2]
Her work regularly appeared in magazines such as Scribner's Monthly, Harper's Weekly, and The Ladies Home Journal.[3] She illustrated books by Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and, notably, the 1903 edition of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. With artist and educator Emily Sartain, she was one of the founders of the Plastic Club of Philadelphia (1897), the oldest art club for women in continuous existence.[4]
Stephens's artistic career spanned 50 years, during which she also lectured, taught, and judged painting and photography. She died at "Thunderbird Lodge" in 1932.
Her papers are in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.
