Background
Hill was born Abby Rhoda Williams, the daughter of Henry W. and Hanett Hubbard Williams, in Grinnell, Iowa.
Hill was born Abby Rhoda Williams, the daughter of Henry W. and Hanett Hubbard Williams, in Grinnell, Iowa.
Hill also advocated for children"s rights, attended the 1905 Congress of Mothers in Washington, District of Columbia, and founded the Washington (state) Parent-Teacher Association. She studied art at the Art Students" League in New York under William Merritt Chase.
They had one son and adopted three daughters. 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.
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 died in Laguna Beach in 1943.
She became a founding member of the Laguna Beach Art Association.