This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Born and raised in New York City, Grace Betts became a peripatetic
painter of Western and Southwest landscapes and Indians, and her
subjects included Yosemite National Park and Arizona tribal
members. She was also a muralist who did backdrops for animal
displays at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and an illustrator for
magazines and children's books. The Art Institute of Chicago was
a frequent exhibition venue from the time she was a student there
beginning 1900, and her work was also exhibited at the Laguna Beach
Museum of Art.
Betts was the daughter of artists Jane and Edwin
Betts, and was taught to paint by her parents who called her Gay.
Her exposure to the West came from their travels together in the West
from the early 1900s.
Her family was based in Chicago, and she
graduated from the Chicago Art Institute in 1903. Between 1904
and 1921, she led a "nomadic" existence and lived part of that time at
the Theosophical Society and Universal Brotherhood headquarters at
Point Loma, California. During this period, she painted
landscapes, and did batik work and illustrations for the Society's
publications. She also traveled to Cuba where she taught at the
Society's Raja Yoga Academy and to Chicago where she illustrated
children's books.
In the late 1920s, Betts returned to the West
and took regular sketching trips to New Mexico and Arizona while living
in California in a variety of locations. In San Francisco, she
had a studio on the roof of a San Francisco hotel, and she also lived
in Laguna Beach (1936-1946) and Carlsbad (1948-1954). From 1964
to 1978, she lived in Salome, Arizona, and Beaumont and Calimesa,
California.
During the 1930s, she painted dioramas for the WPA
(Works Progress Administration) in San Diego, and she and her sister,
Vera, did backgrounds for the museum in Yosemite National Park and for
the Simson African Hall of the California Academy of Science in San
Francisco.
In 1929, the Santa Fe Railroad Company acquired two
Arizona landscapes by Betts, and in 1954, the All Tribes Indian Center
in Chicago acquired six of her large Indian studies, and several others
were displayed as part of the Anselm Forum's Indian Collection in Gary,
Indiana.
Sources:
Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, Women Artists of the American West
Edan Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940 |
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
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Grace Betts is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Taos Pre 1940
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