Mother Goose

The sisters Anna Whalen Betts and Ethel Franklin Betts both attended classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the late-nineteenth century before transferring to the Drexel Institute to study with renowned illustrator Howard Pyle. Ethel went on to further study with Pyle at his Wilmington school. She worked steadily as an illustrator in the first decade of the twentieth century, but after her marriage in 1909 she only took occasional commissions. In this painting, which was used for two separate volumes of nursery rhymes, Betts imagines the mythical Mother Goose reading her stories to a group of children listening with rapt attention.