Bettina Steinke has been called “The Grand Dame”, the best female Western portraitist in the country.” Bettina died in her beloved town of Santa Fe, July 13, 1999. Although she became interested in art as a career at the age of twelve, it was not until she was seventeen that she began her formal training in art. She attended Fawcett’s Art School in Newark, New Jersey and then studied at Cooper Union and the Phoenix Art Institute in New York City. A celebration and success from the beginning, Bettina had received numerous commissions by age twenty-eight and was then inducted into the prestigious Society of Illustrators. She has profiled people such as Joel and Francis McCrea, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, fellow artists including Leon Gaspard, George Carlson, Robert Lougheed, and a host of others. Considering western themes as her favorite art representations, Bettina’s portrayals of both Indians and Eskimos are expressive in their vitality, rich and velvety in their strong accurate coloration's and serene in the image they present the viewer. Steinke’s paintings are very much involved with people of several races and nationalities. She says, “I watch constantly for typical postures, the habits and physical types within ethnic groups...our western heritage covers a broad range of subject matter, and all of it is of great interest to painters living in this wide country.”