Ellen Wetherald Ahrens was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1859. She studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she studied under Thomas Eakins, and at the Drexel Institute, where she studied under Howard Pyle in 1897. During this time she shared a studio at 1523 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia with Jessie Willcox Smith and Violet Oakley, two other Pyle students.

Later she attended the Carnegie Institute to further her studies in portraiture. Ahrens was a member of the Pennsylvania Society of Miniature Painters, the Philadelphia Plastic Club, and the Philadelphia Water Color Club. She exhibited her works at the the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she won the second Toppan Prize in 1884, at the Carnegie Institute, where she won the silver medal in 1901, and at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904.

In the November 1901 issue of International Studio, Charles H. Coffin describes her work Sewing:   A Portrait, for which Ahrens won the silver medal at the Carnegie Institute:

It is certainly a very faithful study of character...and it is very truely drawn and satifactory in values...but almost painfully methodical, austere in color and quite undistinguished for style.

Examples of her illustrations can be found in the books Jo's Boys by Louisa May Alcott and A Maid of Bar Harbor by Henrietta Gould Rowe. 

Stanley Massey Arthurs was one of Howard Pyle's few students who were native Delawareans. He was born November 24, 1877, to Nancy and Joshua Arthurs, in Kenton, Delaware, where Joshua Arthurs owned a general store. Arthurs was interested in art as a boy, and, after leaving school, he studied in Wilmington with Clawson Hammit,  who urged him to study with Pyle. Convinced of his talent, Pyle enthusiastically accepted him as a student. In 1897 Arthurs joined the classes Pyle was teaching at Drexel Institute, and in 1898 he was invited to attend the summer scholarship classes at Chadds Ford. His first illustration was published in the December 2, 1899, issue of Harper's Weekly. When Pyle left Drexel to open his own school in Wilmington, Arthurs went with him and worked in one of the studios Pyle had built for the school. When Pyle died in 1911, Arthurs purchased his studio and, until he died, led a quiet, solitary life there, dedicated to his work.  He lectured occasionally at the Wilmington Academy and did some teaching in his studio.

Clifford Ashley was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on December 18, 1881, son of Abiel Davis and Caroline Morse Ashley. After graduation from New Bedford High School he went to Boston to study art at the Eric Pape School, which N.C. Wyeth, Sidney Chase, and Ashley's cousin Henry Peck also attended. The four students spent the summer of 1901 in Annisquam, Massachusetts, under George L. Noyes's tutelage.