James Scripps Booth

Growing up in a household that encouraged an awareness and appreciation of the arts, James Scripps Booth spent many hours sketching in and around his parents' home in Detroit. There he had access to one of the largest private collections of old master paintings and etchings in the Midwest, and it was in the Scripps home that he was brought into the company of many distinguished artists, writers, and musicians.

While attending the Detroit University School and the St. Luke's School for Boys in Wayne, Pennsylvania, Booth executed posters, handbills, sketches, and set designs for student publications and productions. He also produced several racing scenes and other works featuring automobiles during this period, giving notice that automotive themes were never far from his mind.

Booth was essentially self-taught as an artist, although he did attend the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1911 and studied for a period under Myron Barlow, the Michigan-born artist, in France. His work received critical acclaim at exhibitions at the Detroit Museum of Art and at other shows in Michigan and California in the 1910s through the 1930s. However, Booth's reluctance to part with his art work greatly limited his appeal to collectors. Only a handful of his paintings and pastels ever came to be owned outside the Booth family.

Best known for his pastel work, Booth also produced a large number of oils, charcoal drawings, pen and ink sketches, watercolors, and pencil drawings. None of the few sculptures he executed are known to exist.