Anna Hills (1882-1930)

Hiro Fine Art is interested in purchasing artwork by Anna Hills.

Born in Ravenna, Ohio in 1882, Anna Althea Hills was a prominent California landscape painter and civic leader in Laguna Beach. In addition to painting in her native state, she was active in Arizona. She was raised in Olivet, Michigan, and attended Olivet College. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, Cooper Union in New York (for the Advancement of Science and Art), privately with Arthur Dow and John Noble Barlow, and the Academie Julian in Paris. She painted figures and genre scenes in a dark palette. Upon moving to Laguna Beach in 1913, she pursued landscape painting of the coast in a light palette with an Impressionist and atmospheric style. Her paintings were combinations of watercolor and oil. Working en plain air, she ventured on painting trips to secluded mountains despite her severe spinal injury.

She served as the President of the Laguna Beach Art Association for six years, working to raise funds to erect a gallery, which is now the Steele Gallery in the Laguna Art Museum. In addition, Hills was an active member in the California Art Club and the Washington Watercolor Club. She was an art teacher of high regard and encouraged public schools to embrace the visual arts. Her landscapes included: treescapes, the Laguna Beach coastline, Mission San Juan Capistrano, vast Southern California and Arizona deserts, Santa Ana Canyon, arroyos and interior scenes. Hills won the Bronze Medal at the Panama-California Exposition, San Diego in 1915; the Bronze Medal at the California State Fair, 1919; and the Landscape Prize at the Laguna Beach Art Association, 1922, 1923. At just forty-eight, she died on June 13, 1930 in Laguna Beach, California.