Pen-and-ink Drawing, captioned “Caleb’s courtship / Eunice Stout”, signed (“A.B. Frost”)

N.p., 1885. One a sheet measuring 13-1/2 x 10 inches. 1 vols. Image size, 6 x 5 in. Some soilng and staining, mostly marginal, and two small, light stains within image. Framed and glazed. Frost, A.B. One a sheet measuring 13-1/2 x 10 inches. 1 vols. Image size, 6 x 5 in. A delicate, lightly-inked drawing of a young woman, standing at a kitchen table, stirring the ingredients of a large bowl, beside which sit a jug and an opened bag. She is dressed simply, in a blouse and skirt, and wears a large sun-bonnet. Her face is in repose, and the skill of the artist has invested the drawing with a sense of gentle calm. In the lower right corner, there is a pencilled (truncated) note “Reduced to 2/3 col wide Mag. pro.”, from which we may infer that this is an illustration for a piece of magazine fiction, but we have been unable to trace which one.

To judge from the Frost watercolor, "The Candlestick Girl", reproduced in Henry M. Reed's The A.B. Frost Book, in which "the model in this painting is thought to be Miss Emily Phillips who shortly after this painting was completed became Mrs. A.B. Frost" (p. 19), this drawing is also of the artist's wife -- the resemblance is unmistakable, the drawing showing the young woman's face in considerably greater detail.

Emily Louise Levis Phillips came from a prominent Philadelphia family; she studied art in Germany and was an artist of no small skill. She was born in 1852, one year and two days after the birth of her husband; they were married in 1883, and she died just six months after him, in 1928.

A FINE, SENSITIVE DRAWING OF MAJOR ASSOCIATION INTEREST. (Inventory #: 11367)