Effie Anderson Smith

Who was Effie Anderson Smith?

Effie Anderson Smith, also known as Mrs. A.Y. Smith, was an early Arizona impressionist painter of desert landscapes, many of Cochise County and the Grand Canyon.

Smith was born in the rural countryside near Nashville, Arkansas, in 1869. She grew up in Arkansas and may have served as a school teacher in Little Rock while in her early teens. She studied at the National Academy of Design in New York, in Philadelphia, and also in California in Oakland, with May Bradford Shockley in San Francisco, in Laguna Beach with Anna Althea Hills and also at the Stickney School in Pasadena with Jean Mannheim and Richard E. Miller. Her exhibitions include a show of her Southwest paintings in Corcoran Hall at George Washington University in Washington, DC beginning May 20, 1931. She lived for 50 years in the southeast of Arizona, primarily in Pearce and later in Douglas in Cochise County, and seasonally in Morenci in Greenlee County at the home of her son Lewis A. Smith.

Smith moved to Prescott, Arizona in 1951, and died there at the Arizona Pioneers' Home in 1955.