Ethel Franklin Betts Bains

This biography from the archives of AskART.com.

A contemporary of illustrator Jessie Willcox Smith, Ethel Betts studied with Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia and became a very popular illustrator of children's books during "The Golden Age of Illustration."

She was the sister of illustrator Anna Whelan Betts, and both girls moved to Wilmington, Delaware to have continued access to the teaching of Howard Pyle who had established a school there.

Her work includes "Fairy Tales from Grimm, and, "The Complete Mother Goose" and "The Six Swans," which won a bronze medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915.

Credit: Walt Reed, "The Illustrator in America, 1860-2000"