 Born in Leavenworth, Kansas, she studied at Vassar College, at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Art Student's League.She studied with Howard Pyle and in 1911, along with Ethel Leach and Olive Rush, she was living in Pyle's studio, when he died on a trip to Italy.By 1914 she was established as a magazine illustrator and landscape painter.