Signal Hill is an etching from 1928 by American artist, Roi Partridge. It is pencil signed in the lower right and the title and the artist’s name are incised into the plate in the lower right image. Signal Hill was printed by the artist on a sheet of ivory laid J F Head watermarked paper in an edition of sixteen impressions. The image measures 13-13/16 by 10-3/4 inches.
Signal Hill is an incorporated city in Southern California which is completely surrounded by the City of Long Beach. Partridge produced his etching, Signal Hill, just seven years after the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company hit the first "gusher" of oil there on 23 June 1921. Over the centuries the land changed hands many times and supported cattle, horse, and sheep ranches. In the 1500s, the Puva tribe used the hilltop to signal other tribes on Santa Catalina Island some twenty-six miles offshore. The Spanish named the hill Loma Sental which translates to Signal Hill. Signal Hill eventually became one of the richest oil fields in the world and produced over one billion barrels of oil by 1984.
Roi Partridge, printmaker, draftsman, and teacher, was born in the Territory of Washington. He studied at the Fine Art Institute in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1909, he was in the northwest when the Seattle Public Library mounted an exhibition of prints by Whistler, Haden, Pennell, Nordfeldt, and Old Masters. It was pivotal for Partridge as he left to study at the National Academy of Design in New York.
In 1910 Partridge began a journey which ended in Paris. Unable to afford the academies, he was primarily self-taught but he found a mentor in the Chicago-based printmaker Bertha Jaques. Through her efforts his etchings were exhibited with the Chicago Society of Etchers. He returned to the Northwest in 1914 and then settled in San Francisco in 1917. Partridge began teaching at Mills College in 1920 and later served as the first director of the Mills College Art Gallery.
Partridge was included in the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition and he had solo exhibitions at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution. He was a member of the California Society of Etchers, Chicago Society of Etchers, Northwest Printmakers, and Society of American Etchers. In 1949 Partridge was elevated to full Academician in the National Academy of Design. He is represented in the British Museum, Mills College, the Brooklyn Museum, the Bancroft Library at the University of California, the Oakland Museum of California, and the New York Public Library.
