A charter member of the Birmingham Art Club (established in 1908), the painter Carrie Hill emerged as one of the group’s most successful artists, exhibiting her work to great acclaim locally, nationally, and internationally. Hill was already a well-established painter and art instructor when, in 1922, she undertook studies with the American Impressionist George Elmer Browne at his school in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Later that year, Hill joined Browne and other artists on a tour of France, Spain, and Morocco, the first of three trips abroad she would make with Browne.
In this canvas, Hill depicts the foothills of the Pyrenees, the picturesque mountain range that defines the border between France and Spain. While foreign travel honed Hill’s artistic abilities, exposing her to an exotic array of subject matter, colors, and atmospheric conditions, she always returned to the landscape of her native Alabama. She once remarked, “The subject matters little. It is what the artist puts into it that counts. So the field to me is limitless—there are possibilities everywhere—and everything appeals to me that is beautiful and artistic.”
