Indian Paint Brushes by Alice Stewart Hill, Watercolor on Paper
Artist Biography
In 1894, Alice Stewart Hill joined her family in Colorado Springs, having lived with them earlier in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Her father, George H. Stewart, was a judge. She arrived in Colorado with solid credentials in art, having studies in New York at Cooper Union’s School of Design. In her new Colorado home, she opened a studio offering classes in drawing, watercolor, and oil painting.
Colorado Springs was barely underway at the time, having been founded in 1871 by the railroad builder, William Jackson Palmer. Though Hill’s new home was still a frontier town when she arrived there, the largely monied and educated newcomers who settled the city were appreciative of art and culture. Because the city was new and small — hardly a city at all — its natural surroundings were unsullied. During mild seasons, wild flowers grew everywhere. Hill took notice, studied and recorded them in drawings, watercolors, and etchings. Her evolving plant expertise draw acclaim from profession botanists, including Asa Gray of Harvard, a leader in botany studies.
Hill’s flower illustrations appeared in several publications, among them Helen Hunt Jackson’s The Procession of Flowers in Colorado (1886). Tutt Library at Colorado College and the Denver Public Library have copies from the limited edition of 100.
Hill was married to Francis Hill, regarded as an “austere Englishman,” who founded the region’s Humane Society in 1896 and is buried at Evergreen cemetery in Colorado Springs.
