Blanche Dillaye was born in Syracuse, N.Y. She studied with Thomas Eakins and Stephen Parrish.

She was a painter, illustrator and etcher of landscapes, seascapes and architecture; silversmith, jeweler and poster designer; writer and teacher; president and a founder of the Plastic Club in Philadelphia; president of both the Fellowship of the Pennsylvania Academy and the Philadelphia Watercolor Club; as well as director of art education at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She was a member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors in New York City; the New York City Watercolor Club; Philadelphia Society of Etchers; Chicago Watercolor Club, Illinois; Daedalus Arts and Crafts Guild of Philadelphia; and the Black and White Club.

Dillaye exhibited at the Ohio Valley Centennial, 1888; World's Columbian, 1893; Cotton States, 1895; International, 1895 (silver medal); Pan-American, 1901; Exposition Universelle, Lorient, France, 1903; Louisiana Purchase, 1904; National Conservation Exposition, Knoxville, Tennessee, 1913 (gold medal); Panama-Pacific, 1915; and the Sesqui-Centennial, Philadelphia, 1926, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Art Club, and Williams and Everett Gallery; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Society of Artists, Philadelphia Art Alliance, and Philadelphia Society of Etchers; New York Etching Club, Woman's Art Club of New York, Brooklyn Society of Etchers, and American Art Society; and the Syracuse Museum of Fine Art, New York, the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, London, England, and five times in France at the Paris Salon.

As Francine Tyler says in American Etchings of the Nineteenth Century, she had a "penchant for odd nooks and alleys."