The following information was submitted in November of 2006 by Jackie Heinl:

Rachel Sutton was born in the Shadyside area of Pittsburgh.  Her father was Dr. James H. McClelland, a founder of the Shadyside Hospital.  Her mother came from the Bakewell-Pears glass family.  Their family home, called Sunnyridge, was designed by H.H. Richardson, architect of the courthouse in downtown Pittsburgh, and is listed by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation.
 
Except for a period of time during her marriage to William S. Sutton, a certified public accountant who died in 1954, Sutton always lived in Sunnyledge.  She traveled abroad 16 times, the first when she was only two years old.  The artist also traveled widely in the United States and Canada.  She never painted when traveling, but stored away impressions which later found expression in her paintings. 
 
Sutton was educated by a German governess until the age of eight.  She was then enrolled at Miss Ward's School (at the site of the Church of the Ascension).  There she began her art lessons with Miss Stoney. She furthered her education at the preparatory division of the Pennsylvanis College for Women (now Chatham College), the Masters School at Dobbs Ferry, and graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology with a degree in Fine Arts in 1916.  She also attended the Art Student's Leagues in Pittsburgh and New York.
 
Suttons training resulted in portraits, western Pennsylvania landscapes and views of Pittsburgh from the 1920s through 1940s.  The artist also painted many subjects she found in and around her family home.  She worked mainly in oil on canvas and in an impressionistic technique and interest in color.
 
She joined the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh in 1919, often exhibited with them and was awarded several prizes throughout the 61 years of her membership.
 
In 1945, when Sutton's interest shifted to modern-style watercolor, she joined the Watercolor Society.  She was made an honorary member of that society in 1974. 
 
The artist suspended painting in her eighty-second year, due to failing eyesight, but her work was shown later in at least eight local exhibitions.  She once concluded an interview by saying, "It's so nice to have lived long enough to have been discovered".

Source:
Southwestern Pennsylvania Painters edited by Paul A. Chew with the Westmoreland Museum of Art