Nationality American Name Abby Hill | ||
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Full Name Abby Rhoda Williams Education Art Students League of New York | ||
Abby williams hill state capital lecture series
Abbey Williams Hill (1861-1943) was an American plein-air painter most known for her landscapes of the American West. Hill also advocated for children's rights, attended the 1905 Congress of Mothers in Washington, D.C., and founded the Washington (state) Parent-Teacher Association.
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Early life and education
Hill was born Abby Rhoda Williams, the daughter of Henry W. and Hanett Hubbard Williams, in Grinnell, Iowa. She studied art at the Art Students' League in New York under William Merritt Chase. In 1888, She and her husband, Frank Hill, a homeopathic doctor, settled in Tacoma, Washington. They had one son and adopted three daughters.
Career
In the early 1900s, the Great Northern Railway and the Northern Pacific Railway commissioned Hill to paint landscapes of the northwestern United States to promote tourism. The commission required that Hill produce 22 paintings in just 18 weeks, and that she produce them en plein air. Accompanied by her four children, Abby Hill took prolonged camping trips for the purpose of painting scenery in places such as Yosemite National Park and Yellowstone National Park. Her works were exhibited at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis and the 1905 Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland. Over the course of her career, Hill achieved her goal of painting in every national park in the Western United States.
Her husband became incapacitated by psychotic depression in 1911, so the family moved to the small isolated community of Laguna Beach, California, for the benefit of the mild, sunny climate. Abby Hill was one of several early-20th-century American artists who built studios in Laguna Beach and transformed it into an artist community. She became a founding member of the Laguna Beach Art Association.
Following the death of her husband in 1938, Abby Hill became bedridden. She died in Laguna Beach in 1943.
Collection
A permanent collection of her works and papers is held by the University of Puget Sound.
