Annie Harmon was the sister of Edward Harmon, who was married to Tennie Keith, William Keith’s daughter. Through this connection, she became Keith’s student and launched into a career as an exhibiting artist, making her debut at the Spring Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association in 1885. Later the same year, she participated in the landmark “Ladies’ Art Exhibition” where her “several neat sketches” earned a favorable mention in the San Francisco Examiner (Dec. 16, 1885). Harmon sent small-scale landscapes to the Art Association exhibitions most years until 1913. Her works show the influence of the Barbizon aesthetic, embraced by William Keith in his later career, featuring broad open foregrounds, informal compositions, and muted color schemes. In the early twentieth century, her style occasionally showed some of the traits of the plein-air, impressionist movement, with paintings that depict bright orange poppies in green California springtime scenes.
