Robert Julian Onderdonk, born in San Antonio in 1882, was the son of painter Robert Jenkins Onderdonk. He grew up in San Antonio and from an early age showed an interest in drawing and painting. His early art training was with his father, followed in 1901 with studies at the Art Students League in New York City.

Born in Forney, Texas, and raised in Dallas, Spellman studied at Columbia University, the University of Iowa, and the College of Industrial Arts (now Texas Woman's University) in Denton, where she taught for nearly fifty years. Skilled in all aspects of printmaking (specifically etching, aquatint, mezzotint and lithography), she was drawn to working on paper, meditating closely on details which would come to mark her individual style.

The following essay is from the 1989 publication American Furniture in the Bybee Collection, by Charles L. Venable.