A figure and marine painter early in her career and a landscape, still life and portrait painter in her later period, Anna Lee 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 hu...