Annie Sykes (1855-1931) was born in Brookline, MA in 1855. She was a first-generation American Impressionist who specialized in watercolors and focused on garden, floral, landscape, and shoreline subjects. She was raised in Boston, where she was among the very first women to enter the BMFA School. Her career was spent mostly in Cincinnati, where she was a leading member of the art community. During the summers, she painted along the New England coast in places such as Nonquitt (where she had a summer home) and Gloucester, Mass., and Cape Porpoise, Maine. Her watercolors of 1895-1915 are brilliant in color and bear striking comparisons with those by Childe Hassam; thereafter, she developed a bold post-impressionist style. In 1901, just five years after her first exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, she was asked to be on the jury for their prestigious annual watercolor exhibition. She made painting trips to Europe (1906 & 1909), Bermuda (1913), and Texas.

Studied

Lowell Inst., Boston, 1877; BMFA School, 1878-82; Cincinnati Art Academy with T.S. Noble and F. Duvaneck, 1884-94

Member

Cincinnati Women’s Art Club (founding member; pres. 1903) NAWA; NYWCC; AWCS

Exhibited

Cincinnati Centennial Exhibition, 1888; Boston AC, 1890-97; NYWCC, 1891-1916; World’s Columbian Expo, Woman’s Bldg., 1893; Cincinnati Women’s Art Club, 1893-1929; Cincinnati Art Museum, 1895-1926 (including annuals; two-person show in 1908 with Emma Mendenhall; and three-person show, 1910, with Mendenhall and Dixie Selden); Traxel & Maas Gallery, Cincinnati, 1895, 1917 (solos); AIC, 1896-1920; AWCS, 1902, 1924; Phila. WCC, 1903-20; PAFA Ann., 1903; Soc. Of Western Artists, 1904;

Resources

WW29; Christine Williams Ayoub, Annie Gooding Sykes (privately published, 1990); Peter H. Falk and Audrey Lewis, Annie Gooding Sykes (exhibition catalog, Spanierman Gallery, NYC, 1998); Falk, Exhibition