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Abby Williams Hill: Artist and Advocate

This digital teaching collection focuses on the life and work of Abby Williams Hill (1861-1943), a landscape painter who lived in Tacoma, Washington.

Discussion Questions

Below are some general discussion questions that can be adapted to many instructional settings:

  1. Why was Abby Williams Hill hired to work for the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railways? How was she compensated for her work? 
  2. Study the paintings by Abby Williams Hill included in this digital teaching collection. Hill painted entirely en plein air, or outdoors. What are some of the key features that you notice in her work?
  3. Using the six sources in this set that relate to Abby Williams Hill’s work for the Great Northern Railway (1903-1904), discuss how Hill’s paintings were used by the railroad. What role did advertising play in the westward expansion? How was advertising in the early 1900s different than it is today?
  4. Review the sources related to Abby Williams Hill’s stay on the Flathead Reservation in Montana (1905). Hill was working on a series of portraits of Native Americans. Discuss some of the issues that arise around a white, upper-middle class woman painting portraits of Native Americans at the turn of the twentieth century. Consider how Hill’s portraits were being used and displayed for a primarily white audience.
  5. Why does the Abby Williams Hill collection merit attention from modern students and scholars?
     

Classroom Activities

Below are a few classroom activities that can be adapted to various instructional settings:

  1. Five of the sources in this digital teaching collection are oil paintings by Abby Williams Hill. Hill painted entirely en plein air, or outdoors, and this painting style directly parallels the popular and oft-romanticized French impressionist movement. Compare and contrast Hill’s work with the work of artists like Monet, Renoir, Matisse, or Canadian landscape artist Emily Carr (1871-1945) for an interesting class discussion. 

  2. Have students browse through the journals of Abby Williams Hill, which she wrote while traveling through, camping in, and painting many of our nation’s great national parks. Using the visual sources as inspiration, instruct students to write a similarly inspired journal entry about a memorable camp trip, outdoor experience, or national park adventure, with or without an accompanying image or illustration to support their written work.

  3. Using some or all of the materials in this digital teaching collection as inspiration, have students artistically render their own Abby Williams Hill inspired painting, create a travel journal (real or imagined), or use the portraits/photographs to inform their own attempt to show some of their own family history through portraiture in an informal presentation. 

  4. The diversity of the sources in this digital teaching collection lends itself well to a Socratic seminar. Prepare students for discussion by giving them a day to browse through the sources, using informal note taking (or a more formal strategy, see Cornell Notes or OPTIC for visual sources) to prepare for a layered discussion around topics such as the value of local artwork and preservation, how art influences preservation, the relationship between art and the westward expansion, and primary sources and their role in modern history.