Between the desert and the sown

Drawing shows a woman walking along the edge of a canal and a man on horseback on the ridge on the opposite side and above the canal.
Caption from Drawn to Purpose exhibit: Gentlewoman and Artist in the West. Mary Hallock Foote's drawing of a young woman walking along an irrigation ditch serves as a window into her own often isolated situation in the vast, sparsely settled American West. When she married a mining engineer in 1876, she left a budding career on the East Coast but continued illustrating and writing under often challenging conditions. This drawing from nearly twenty years later attests to her persistence in pursuing her career.

(DLC/PP-1934:0209).
Forms part of: Cabinet of American illustration (Library of Congress).
Published in: "Conquest of Arid America," Century magazine, v. 50 (May 1895), p. 89.
Exhibited: "Drawn to Purpose" in the Graphic Arts Gallery, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., March - October 2018.