The daughter of one of Seattle’s founding families, Emily Inez Denny (1853 – 1918) was both an artist and writer. Greatly influenced by seeing the drawings of Sarah Willoughby as a student at the Washington Territorial University, she took on painting as a life-long pursuit. Denny trained with Miss Parsons, Thomas Harrison, and Harriet Beecher. In 1909, she authored and illustrated "Blazing the Way," a book about Seattle’s early white settlers. A woman who thrived on the creation of art, she constantly traveled with a notebook so she could quickly capture her impressions in sketches and paintings. A notation in the margins states, "Sunrise on Rainier," but there is only the faint indication of a mountain in the background and the setting for this drawing is otherwise unidentified.