One of several prominent women associated with the artistic life of turn-of-the-century Cincinnati, Annie G. Sykes was lauded for her colorful, Impressionist-inspired watercolors.

Born Annie Sullings Gooding in Brookline, Massachusetts, she studied at the Lowell Institute in Boston and at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts during the late 1870s. After her marriage to Gerritt Sykes in 1882, she moved to the "Queen City," continuing her training at the Cincinnati Art Academy from 1884 to 1894. Despite the birth of two children, she continued to balance the demands of home life with her professional aspirations, exhibiting her watercolors locally and in Boston, Chicago, NewYork, and Philadelphia.

On the occasion of her first one-person show, held at the Traxel & Maas Gallery in Cincinnati in 1895, critics praised her fresh, vibrant colors and spontaneous technique, and a reviewer for the Cincinnati Enquirer identified her as representing "the new school of impressionism." Sykes's standing among her peers was such that she was often invited to serve on juries of selection with such eminent painters as Frank Duveneck, Maurice Prendergast, and Edward Redfield.

She painted in and around Cincinnati, Nonquitt, Massachusetts (where her family had a summer home), Bermuda, Quebec, Virginia, and Europe. Her oeuvre includes landscapes and street scenes, but she was most fond of depicting the floral environment.

Biography courtesy of Roughton Galleries, www.antiquesandfineart.com/roughton