Watercolor on paper. 570x390 mm; 22 3/8x15 1/4 inches. Signed in ink, lower right recto.
Provenance: Private collection, New Jersey.
One of several prominent women associated with the artistic life of Cincinnati at the turn of the century, Sykes (1855-1931) specialized in colorful, Impressionist-inspired watercolors. She was born in Brookline, Massachusetts; her father was a silversmith and engraver, and her mother was a gifted needleworker. Stimulated by the artistic example of her parents, Sykes studied at the Lowell Institute in Boston in 1875 and enrolled at the school of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1878. She married in 1882 and moved with her husband to Cincinnati, at that time a flourishing cultural center dubbed the "Queen City of the West." In order to refine her artistic skills, she enrolled at the Cincinnati Art Academy in 1884. Throughout the next decade, she continued her training under such notable American painters as Frank Duveneck and Thomas Satterwhite Noble. Although she occasionally worked in oil, watercolor became Sykes' favorite medium of expression.
She was a regular contributor to the annual exhibitions of the Boston Art Club, New York Watercolor Club, Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Water Color Club and the Ohio Water Color Society. In 1892, she became a charter member of the Woman's Art Club of Cincinnati. Over a three-decade-long period, Sykes exhibited at the Cincinnati Art Museum on forty-two occasions.
