Printmaker, painter, and illustrator Churchill Ettinger was born Thomas Churchill Ettinger in Hayworth, New Jersey, on May 10, 1903. He attented the National Academy of Design, the Art Students League, and the New York School of Industrial Art, where he would later teach. He began his art career as a portrait artist and illustrator for several publications, including the New York Sunday World and Outlook Magazine, as well as several pulp publications. He competed in the 1936 Summer Olympics art competition in Berlin, Germany.

Ettinger became known primarily for his images of outdoor sports, hunting and fishing, and animals, and was an enthusiastic outdoorsman himself. He is often considered one of the leading American sportman illustrators and fine artists of the 20th century. He was commissioned by several outdoors magazines to produce oil paintings for their covers, and in 1939 he illustrated Derrydale's The Happy End, a hunting and fishing memoir by Ben Ames Williams. Ettinger and his wife Elizabeth (nee Edwards) settled in Weston, Vermont in the 1950s. 

Ettinger created over 180 intaglio prints, the earliest being published by the Associated American Artists (AAA). His work is held in the collectioned of the Library of Congress, Yale University, Dartmouth College, Iowa State College, the University of Hawaii, the Ford Foundation, the Boston Public Library, Wesleyan University, and the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art. He died in Vermont on March 4, 1984.