“Couple Outside Farmhouse” (1910)
by Helen Mason Grose (1880-1971)
13.75 x 10 in., pencil on board
Coppola Collection

Helen Bowen Mason Grose was born, lived, and died in Providence, RI. She was an artist and a book illustrator.

She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, the Museum of Art in Boston, and the Art League in New York City. Her teachers included Sidney Burley (watercolor), Elizabeth Shippen Green (illustration, life), Frank Benson (life), William Howe Foote (illustration, life, pencil, charcoal), N.C. Wyeth (oil, pencil), and George Woodbury (marine painter). In her art, she worked with watercolors, aquatints, pencil, ink, and pastels, and specialized in floral compositions, marine views, architecture, life models, landscapes, portraits, fishing villages, and house and street scenes. Her works can be found in galleries, libraries, and universities in Rhode Island and with many private collectors. Her specialty was as a book illustrator where she excelled for a period of approximately 15 years from 1914 to 1930. Some of the books that she illustrated include the following: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Seven Vagabonds (1916) and The House of the Seven Gables (1924); Kate Douglas Wiggin, Creeping Jenny, and Other New England Stories (1924) and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1925); Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1920); R.D. Blackmore, Lorna Doone (1917).

The drawing here is dated 1910, and so appears to be an early work. There is no attribution for its use.