Katherine Van Dyke Harker was born in San Francisco in 1872 and began her art studies at age 15 when she enrolled in the Art Student League in San Francisco. She studied with Julie Heyneman and Emil Carlsen. She then attended Vassar College. graduating in 1893. She returned to San Francisco to continue studying at the Art League and the Hopkins Institute.

Harker worked with Mary Curtis Richardson, O. Mendelbaum, E. Klauber, and Gottardo Piazzoni. She studied in England at the Cornish School of Painters, in Spain with Dante Ricci, and in France with Alphons Mucha. She also attended the Academie Colarossi. Harker became interested in Japanese prints and began to work using Japanese principles of pattern and simple composition.

She studied woodcut in California with Frank Morley Fletcher in Santa Barbara, and Shiro Obata in Oakland. She was a member of the San Francisco Artists Association and the San Francisco Society of Women Artists.  She died in San Rafael, CA in 1966.