ANNA ALTHEA HILLS AND WOMEN ARTISTS IN CALIFORNIA PLEIN AIR ART

The Jonathan Club owns work by six incredible female artists as part of its collection. Three of these are contemporary figures, whose creations reside at the Beach Club, while the other three are some of the most well-known names to put a brush to canvas in the field of plein air painting, and who honed their technique in Southern California during the 1920s and 1930s.

The cover essay in the Spring 2025 issue of the California Art Club provides an in-depth rationale for why women artists have often been overlooked in this era. An excerpt from this insightful article, “The Challenges of a Woman Artist” by Jean Stern, Director Emeritus of the Irvine Museum, follows below:

Throughout European History, few women artists achieved widespread recognition before the late-nineteenth century. For hundreds of years, the art world operated as a male- dominated sphere. Art academies, the cornerstones of professional art training, were exclusively reserved for men, leaving women with limited opportunities to pursue formal education. Consequently, a woman’s only path to artistic instruction often depended on having a father or male relative who was an artist and willing to teach her.

Women eventually gained admission to art schools but their education remained limited due to societal constraints. For example, studying anatomy or drawing from live nude models was deemed inappropriate for women, thereby, restricting their ability to master essential aspects of artistic training. When women were finally permitted to study nude subjects, it was strictly within gender-segregated classes. It was not until the late-nineteenth century that some academies began allowing men and women to study the human form together in the same classroom.

On the East Coast, barriers to obtaining a first-rate art education, participating in prestigious art exhibitions, and the exclusive nature of influential art clubs, drove many artists – both women and men - to seek freer opportunities in the West. In this more expansive environment, such restrictions were often more lenient or, in some cases, entirely absent, allowing for greater creative freedom and inclusion.

Undoubtedly the most familiar of these women working en plein air was Anna Althea Hills, whose Desert Gold was acquired by the Jonathan Art Foundation in 2019, with major funding from the Betty and Richard Oxford Trust. Made in 1924, the painting depicts the locale of Whitewater, situated at the bottom of the San Jacinto Mountains in Riverside County, California.

A Midwesterner by birth, Hills received her early education at the preparatory department of Olivet College in Michigan. She took her first art classes in 1898, furthered her training at the Art Institute of Chicago, and later studied at the Woman’s School of Art at Cooper Union in New York. Like many American art students at the time, Hills traveled extensively around Europe, gaining experience in the Netherlands, France, and spending a significant amount of time in England, at art colonies she likely learned of from fellow artists William Wendt and George Gardner Symons. In 1912 she returned to the United States, moving to Los Angeles and later settling in Laguna Beach.

One of the first notices the artist received was in June 1913, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times, who reviewed visited the Kanst Art Gallery where several of her paintings were on show. “Hills is a capable young painter, well trained in her craft,” they commented, continuing by saying she “has a keen eye for composition. All her work is direct, sincere, painter-like.” That year, a substantial number of her paintings were included in the California Art Club’s Gold Medal Exhibition, evidence of her growing status as an artist.

Groundbreaking for the Art Gallery of the Laguna Beach Art Association. Saturday, August 25, 1928, as reported in the Santa Ana Register. August 27, 1928.

Disappointed by the beaches in Santa Monica, Hills traveled to Laguna when friends extolled the quality of artistic life there. She was immediately smitten by the area. “I was so impressed with its charm and beauty and the sweet simplicity of its life that I selected my lot before I left,” she gushed after a day-long sketching trip.

She quickly became a key figure in the development of the Laguna art scene, and a driving force of the Laguna Beach Art Association (LBAA). In 1919 she wrote an article for the American Magazine of Art describing the association’s formation and goals. This piece, featured in one of the nation’s leading art magazines, undoubtedly inspired artists to visit Laguna Beach, one of the most beautiful locations in the country. Fundraising for the association and the promotion of it as an artists’ haven became Hill’s central focus. Visitors flocked from far and wide – even as far away as Europe – while traveling exhibitions went sent forth to help publicize this Californian hub of creativity.

Subsequently, Hills was instrumental in the creation of the LBAA’s first gallery, designed by noted architect Myron Hunt and which opened in 1929. She noted that the gallery’s existence was made possible “because of the cooperation and friends of art who have believed in the value of the service an art gallery can render the community, the world at large.”

A year after the opening, Hills was slowed down by illness. She was implored by her friends to rest, but a determined Hills simply lamented that “there is so much to do.” She continued to make plans and throw herself into work. Then, the day before she was due to give a speech at a Santa Monica art club on June 14, 1930, she died of a heart attack, aged just 48 years old.

Desert Gold, Anna Althea Hills, 1924, oil on canvas. Located on Floor 2, Jonathan Club. Acquired with major funding by the Betty and Richard Oxford Trust.