Home — Effie Anderson Smith

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Effie Anderson Smith (1869-1955) - aka Mrs. A. Y. Smith - was an Arkansas born, early Arizona Impressionist painter of desert landscapes and the Grand Canyon. She was born near Nashville, Arkansas and grew up in the newly established city of Hope. In Hope she discovered a love of drawing and painting - passions that would later change her life.

In 1892 at age 22, Effie traveled west to attend her brother's wedding in Deming, New Mexico. She went home to Arkansas with memories of the beauty and splendor of the desert southwest. After teaching school in Nashville and Hope, she returned to Deming in 1894, and soon met a Scottish immigrant - railroad clerk Andrew Young Smith. The following year, Effie and A. Y. were married in Bisbee, and so began their exciting life together in the rip-roaring mining camps of the Arizona Territory.

A pioneer settler of Cochise County, wife and mother, writer and poet, educator, community activist, Southwest Impressionist painter, arts advocate, and feminist. This website is dedicated to Effie's story.

Effie’s Life, In Brief

1869: Born near Nashville, Arkansas.
1884: At 15 Effie is painting landscapes.
1890: Weds W.M. Spencer in Hope, Ark.
1891: Effie becomes a widow at age 21.
1894-95: Teaches school in Deming, NM.
1895-96: Weds A.Y. Smith, settles in Pearce.
1904-28: Travels to CA for art studies.

1907: Art becomes solace after death of baby girl.
1914-16: Studies in Pasadena & Laguna Beach.
1927-30: Notoriety of Grand Canyon works.
1929: Fire at Smith home, some works lost.
1931: Exhibits in major Eastern Cities.
1931: Beloved husband A.Y. Smith dies.
1932-45: Effie's most prolific years as artist.

1942: Effie unveils new series on Desert Flora.
1945: Starts art discussion class in Douglas.
1948: Effie begins painting Coronado Trail series.
1949: 80th birthday retrospective in Douglas
1951: Moves to AZ Pioneers' Home in Prescott.
1953: Effie ceases painting due to vision issues.
1955: Death claims Effie - Age 85.

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Home Quotes

"Her exhibit is a reminder that Arizona offers every conceivable artistic problem of light, color, mass, lines and emotion. Especially do Arizona lights test the abilities, for in few places is it so intense, so quickly changing and so suggestive of varying moods. In this phase of work alone Mrs. Smith has established herself as an artist of excellent ability."

- Bernice Cosulich - Arizona Daily Star - January 25, 1927

"The expression of space by a graduation of color ranging from the clear cut Yucca and yellow grasses across the base line to the many colored tips of the mountain vanishing in the sky was distinctive. From the saturated colors of the desert to the hues of the mountain tops and shades of the canyons the noted colourist depicted Southern Arizona as only one could who loved the country and was in sympathy with its every mood."

- The Benson News - December 11, 1926

"...It is the desert and the desert hills and mountains that this artist has glorified, not a land of sand and wasteland, but a country where color runs riot from its desert blossoms to its famous sunsets..."

- Alice Mahoney - Douglas Daily Dispatch - January 11, 1942

Cochise Stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains near E.A. Smith's home in Pearce. She is known to have painted this vista 14 times.

The unique geologic formation known as the Rockfellow Dome - at Cochise Stronghold near Pearce, Arizona.

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"If every sound has its corresponding color wave, may we not dream of a bewildering color feast flung on canvas to the tones of a Wagner overture or a Beethoven sonata? What a fascinating problem it would be to work out the color probabilities of the great masterpieces of music. I believe Beethoven of all the master musicians would best have interpreted this desert land of ours. Being deaf he dwelt in the vast silences and understood their vibrations."

-from "The Relation of Sound to Color", a lecture at the Tucson Women's Club by Effie Anderson Smith - Tucson, Arizona - March 1932