Ethel Alice Kirkpatrick, painter, printmaker, illustrator, and jeweler, was born in Clerkenwell, London on 30 November 1869, the daughter of Mary and Thomas Sutton Kirkpatrick. Her mother was from Yorkshire, her father was a professional soldier from a landed family at Coolmine in Dublin. Thomas Kirkpatrick was the resident governor of the Cold Bath Fields Prison where Ethel was born. Her older sister, Ida Marion Kirkpatrick (1866 - 1950) was also an artist.

Ethel studied at the Royal Academy Schools and the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London where she learned enameling and woodcut. It is presumed that Frank Morley Fletcher instructed her in woodcut techniques. She continued her studies at the Académie Julien in Paris.

Of independent means, the Kirkpatrick sisters traveled widely. They visited the artist colony of St Ives in Cornwall on numerous occasions and they also had a twenty year association with the artist’s colony at Walberswick in Suffolk. Both sisters moved back to the family home, The Gables at Harrow-on-the Hill, in 1906 where they had a studio to work in.

Ethel Kirkpatrick exhibited at the Alpine Club Gallery; the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours; the Royal Society of British Artists; the Royal Academy of Arts; the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers; the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts; and the Beaux Arts Gallery. She was a member of and exhibited with the Society of Women Artists, the Society of Graver-Painters, and the Colour Woodcut Society. Kirkpatrick’s work is represented in the National Gallery of Canada, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Hunterian Museum, Glascow; and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Ethel Kirkpatrick died in Holborn on 28 December 1966, outliving her sister Ida by sixteen years.