Anna Hills

Anna Althea Hills 1882 - 1930		White Daffodils 1904
Wooded Stream and Sheep	Yellow Daffodils	White Daffodils 1904
Laguna Shore	Red Roses	Pale Opal

As a preacher's kid, young Anna Hills lived in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio. Her mother died in 1886 when Anna was only four. As a teenager, Anna pursued a passion for painting, leading to studies at Olivet College , the Art Institute in Chicago and Cooper Union in New York where she won awards in watercolor and oil still lifes. She continued her studies in America with Rhonda Holmes Nicholls and Arthur W. Dow at Ipswich, Massachusetts. In 1908, she commenced four years of study at the Academie Julian in Paris and with John Noble Barlow in England.

In 1913 at age thirty-one, she came to Los Angeles. By 1914, she had settled in Laguna Beach, and helped organize the Laguna Beach Art Association, serving six times as its president. In California, Anna departed from the dark tonal qualities of earlier works and used brighter colors in a more impressionistic style. Her favored themes included trees along the coast and California desert scenes.

Anna Hills works were exhibited widely including The California Art Club, the Panama-California International Exposition, the Laguna Art Association, the California State Fair, and the Washington Watercolor Club. Her solo shows included the Kanst Galleries in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Museum, the Fern Buford Galleries in Laguna Beach. Forty-four years after her death, the Laguna Beach Art Association sponsored an exhibition of her work in 1974. Her paintings hang in the Laguna Art Museum and the Irvine Museum, the Fleisher Museum, and the Orange County Museum.

Sources: Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, 1998; Edan Milton Hughes, Artists in California 1786 - 1940, 3d ed.