Lilian Westcott Hale's mentor Edmund Tarbell exclaimed after seeing her drawings in the one-woman 1908 Boston show, “Your drawings are perfectly beautiful—as fine as anything could be. They belong with our old friends Leonardo, Holbein, and Ingres, and are to me the finest modern drawings I have ever seen” (Philip Hale Papers, Box 53a, Folder 1444, SSC). Indeed, Hale's drawings are rendered with remarkable sensitivity and demonstrate a distinctive poetic tenderness. She was one of the great draftsman of the Boston School, excelling particularly in the charcoal medium.

Hale displayed her drawings alongside her paintings and considered them to be of equal importance. As one contemporary reviewer remarked, “But in her drawing, it is safe to say that she is without a rival. The delicacy of her black and white is indescribable; the whiteness of the white, and the paleness of the gray are notable always, but the subtlety of the two as they become one, tests the eye of the average observer.” Her drawing technique is also singular—the subtle modulation of tone is created by parallel vertical lines, layered with varying density, which contrast with the white of the untouched paper.

Hale's choice of subject matter, gentile interiors and scenes from nature, reflect the taste of the day; the advice of her mentors, who included Edmund Tarbell, William Merritt Chase, and Phillip Leslie Hale (later her husband); and her personal preference for such themes. Her refined and delicate drawing style lent itself perfectly to her subjects. She captures an innate sense of beauty without looking cloying or sentimental.

Completed in 1907, Reading Tea Leaves is a superb example of Hale’s mature drawing style. The entirety of the image is fully rendered with an extraordinary breadth of tones, ranging from the pale and delicate values to a deep, rich charcoal gray. While the most careful attention is given to the young woman’s face and the contrapposto of her figure, the background is also rendered with considerable detail—Hale has captured the abstract design on the Japanese screen and brocade of the chair with incredible delicacy. She also leads the viewer back in space by giving a glimpse of another room in the distance. There is something wonderfully mysterious about this drawing. Hale beautifully captures the inner life of her sitter and the interior world of her environment in equal measure.