Ethel Sands (6 July 1873 – 19 March 1962) was an American-born artist and hostess who lived in England from childhood. She studied art in Paris, where she met her life partner Anna Hope Hudson. Her works were generally still lifes and interiors, often of Château d'Auppegard that she shared with Hudson. Sands was a Fitzroy Street Group and London Group member. Her works are in London's National Portrait Gallery and other public collections. In 1916, she became a naturalised British citizen. Although a major art patron and an artist, she is most remembered as a hostess for the cultural elite, including Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry and Augustus John.

Ethel Sands was born on 6 July 1873 in Newport, Rhode Island, the first child of Mary Morton (Hartpence) and Mahlon Day Sands, who married in 1872. Mahlon Sands was secretary of the American Free Trade League, who in 1870 advocated for civil service reform and free trade. He was partner of his deceased father's pharmaceutical importing firm, A.B. Sands and Company. Ethel had two younger brothers, Mahlon Alan and Morton Harcourt Sands, who were, respectively, 5 and 11 years younger.

In 1874, the family left the United States for England, intending to only visit the country. However, Mahlon Sands and his family stayed in England and travelled among European countries. They also visited the United States annually and were there for an extended visit from 1877 to 1879. They kept their house in Newport, Rhode Island throughout this time.

The wealthy Sands circulated among London society, including writer and statesman John Morley, politician William Ewart Gladstone, writer Henry James, artist John Singer Sargent, the Rothschild family, and Henry Graham White. Mahlon's sister, Katherine, was married to journalist and newspaper editor Edwin Lawrence Godkin. They were part of Edward VII, then Prince of Wales', social circle.

John Singer Sargent painted the portrait of her mother, who was considered "a famous society beauty of her day." Mary Sands was "much admired" by writer Henry James, who called her "that gracious lady" and based his heroic character "Madame de Mauves" on her.

Ethel Sands was raised in a respectable upper-class household in which her parents were "happily married". While her father was considered handsome and her mother beautiful, Anthony Powell states that some people wrote in their diaries and letters that she was plain. In her later years, Powell met her and said that "so great was her elegance, charm, capacity to be amusing in a no-nonsense manner, that I could well believed her to be good-looking in her youth. Her father had ridden horseback through Hyde Park, was thrown from the horse and died an accidental death in 1888. His widow, Mary Sands, raised Ethel and her brothers until her death on 28 July 1896.

Encouraged by artist John Singer Sargent, Sands studied painting in Paris at the Académie Carrière under Eugène Carrière for several years, beginning in 1894. There she met fellow student Nan Hudson, born Anna Hope Hudson in the United States, who became her life partner. During this time, Sands became the guardian of her two younger brothers following her mother's death in 1896.

Sands painted still lifes and interior settings. Tate suggests that was inspired by Édouard Vuillard's dry brush technique, colour palette and depiction of "intimate" scenes. Her first exhibition was at Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1904.