A figure and marine painter early in her career and a landscape, still life and portrait painter in her later period, Anna Stacey lived primarily in Chicago where her studio was in the Tree Studio Building on the city's North Side.  However, she spent much time traveling back and forth between Illinois and California, and about 1915, was in Arizona where she painted the Grand Canyon.  She lived in San Francisco in 1939 and Pasadena from 1941.

She was born in Glasgow, Missouri, and began her studies at the Kansas City Art Association's School of Design.  There she met the School Director, John Stacey, whom she married in 1891.  She also studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1893 to 1899, and traveling to Paris with her husband, attended the Académie Delecluse.  This was followed by three more trips to Europe.

She was a member of the Chicago Water Color Club, and won the Martin B. Cahn Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Society of Artists.  Of Anna Stacey, it was written: "her marines and out-of-door figure paintings found considerable favor among the women's clubs that served as important art patrons in turn-of-the-century Chicago." (Greenhouse, 232)

She exhibited in 1938 with the California Art Club and the Plein Air Painters of Southern California.   Her work is in numerous collections including that of the Santa Fe Railroad and the Union League Club of Chicago, which owns the Pre-Raphelite figure painting, Tropies of the Field, which won the Cahn Prize.

She died in Pasadena in 1943.

Sources:

Wendy Greenhouse, "Anna Lee Stacey", Union League Club of Chicago Art Collection

Doris Dawdy, Artist of the American West, Volume II