Abby williams hill: wanderlust
Last week of exhibit
Check your preconceptions at the door when you come to see Abby Williams Hill: Wanderlust, Works on Paper 1895 – 1927,on view until May 20, 2012.
Abby Williams Hill (1861-1943) was a strong-willed woman, a social rights activist who championed the causes of children, Blacks, and Native Americans, a woman whose idea of a good time was to lace up her hiking boots, shoulder her tent and painting equipment, and light out for months in the remote wilderness.
She did not like corsets, polite society, or rattlesnakes. She loved art, and she saw her world in terms of light, color, and texture.
The exhibit features the drawings and sketches done during three decades. She was born in Grinnell, Iowa, educated at the Art Students League in New York, and settled in Tacoma with her husband, Dr. Frank Hill. In 1894 the Hills bought property on Vashon and Abby established a studio at Burton where she spent summers from 1896 – 1905, as well as good amounts of time camping at Tahlequah.
Between 1903 and 1906 Abby accepted four commissions from the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads. As payment, she was given vouchers for her whole family so that they might travel throughout the United States. These commissions allowed her extended stays in the North Cascades and at Yellowstone National Park, and fixed her reputation as a professional landscape painter. The works in the exhibit are selected from her visits to Vashon, her trips for the railroads, and her European travels.
Click here for Curator’s Statement
