[[File:Immigrantes - Prudence Heward.jpg|alt= The Immigrants, Prudence Heward, 1929, Private Collection, Toronto|thumb| The Immigrants, Prudence Heward, 1929, Private Collection, Toronto]]
Though Heward also painted landscapes and still lifes, she was primarily a painter of human subjects. As Julia Skelly points out in [http://www.aci-iac.ca/prudence-heward Prudence Heward: Life & Work], Heward preferred the term “figures” to portraits, and most of her figurative paintings are of women who often return the viewer’s gaze, and who are "realistically rendered rather than unrealistically idealized."<ref name=":1">{{cite web | url= http://www.aci-iac.ca/prudence-heward/technique-and-style | title=Prudence Heward: Life & Work | publisher= Art Canada Institute | work=Technique and Style | accessdate=25 November 2015 | author= Skelly, Julia }}</ref> These include [[nudity|nude]] subjects which was sometimes controversial in the 1930s.<ref>{{cite book|title=The women of Beaver Hall Canadian modernist painters|date=2005|publisher=Dundurn Press|isbn=1282810855|location=Toronto [Ont.]|page=17|last1=Walters|first1=Evelyn}}</ref> Art historian [[Charmaine Nelson]] has critically examined Heward’s depictions of black women she painted.<ref name=":0" />
Her work was influenced by schools of European [[modernism]] and her application of these principles and styles was more than merely formal. They provided her "with a dynamic visual vocabulary for depicting modern Canadian women in both rural and urban contexts."<ref name=":1" />
