Ryerson was the daughter of David Austen Ryerson and the sculptress Mary McIlvaine Brown. She graduated from Vassar College in 1909, studied at Columbia University, and with Charles Hawthorne on Cape Cod. She spent two years at the Art Students League with summers in Woodstock and was a favorite pupil of Robert Henri.
Ryerson specialized in painting children. She taught twice a week in a church settlement while in art school, and drew children after lessons. Later she sketched in a day nursery and at a music school settlement. She did a special series of etchings of orphans in New York settlement houses in the 1930s. She lived and worked in a studio in the old Sherwood Building on 57th Street from 1924 until 1960 when the building was torn down.
She assisted Robert Henri with his book The Art Spirit and assisted Mrs. Hawthorne in writing Hawthorn on Painting. Her work was handled by the Grand Central Art Galleries. She spent summers in Bar Harbor, Maine, and was nominated to the NAD by H. R. Rittenberg.
