Jessie Arms Botke (1883 - 1971)

Jessie Arms Botke was born to English parents in Chicago on May 27,1883 and was an artist from birth. She spent much of her childhood sketching and painting, and at the age of 14 starting taking art classes at the Art Institute of Chicago (where she enrolled as a full-time student after graduating high school). After graduating, Botke worked in wall decoration and book illustration and refined her skills as a decorative artist. Several years later she was employed at Herter Looms of New York where she worked on tapestry design, painted panels and friezes, and began to specialize in painting birds.

In 1914, Jessie Hazel Arms met design artist Cornelius Botke in Chicago, and they married a year later. Together, the Botkes worked as artists in Chicago, San Francisco, and Carmel, CA, and they traveled often to New York City and Europe. They both worked on major art commissions and held their largest joint exhibition in 1942 at the Ebell Club, a conservative club for the advancement of women and culture. Working in an era when many women artists were forced to end their careers, Botke successfully integrated her painting with her personal and public life. When Jessie's eyesight began to fail in 1961, she continued painting small watercolors until surgery and contact lenses restored her vision and she resumed painting full-time. A stroke in 1967 destroyed her ability to paint, and she died four years later at the age of 88.

That her work was accepted during her life, and has critically withstood the test of time decades later, is a testament to the sheer timeless beauty of her paintings.