Springtime is the official theme of Penfield’s poster advertising the May 1894 issue of Harper’s magazine; but he characteristically subverts its conventions with his image of a modern woman (a “New Woman”), clad in a severe, gray dress and looking back in alarm at the sheep and gamboling lambs in a sunny field as she exits the frame, clutching a copy of Harper’s in her black-gloved hand. This irreverent, sophisticated design was clearly intended to appeal to the magazine’s intellectual, urban readers.