Cornelis Botke was primarily a landscape painter but was also known as a skilled etcher and block-printer. He was born in Leewarden, Holland on July 6, 1887 and studied there at the School of Applied Design in Haarlem. In 1906 he moved to the United States and settled in Chicago, where he became an architectural draftsman at the Art Institute of Chicago. While in Chicago, Botke met and married Jessie Arms, also a painter and muralist.

In 1919, the two of them moved to Carmel, California, where Cornelis took a teaching position at Carmel Arts and Crafts. Together the couple worked as artists doing major commissioned pieces as well as personal works. In 1927 they bought a ranch in Southern California near Santa Paula where they remained. Cornelis exhibited throughout his career at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1931, 1933, 1934, 1938 and 1939 and also at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1916, 1918, 1921, 1930. His work is in the Kellogg factory in Battle Creek, Michigan and the Ida Noyes Hall at the University of Chicago.

Cornelis Botke died in Santa Paula, California on September 16, 1954.