CHARLES ROBINSON SYKES, 'RILETTE’ (BRITISH 1875-1950)
The bath
pencil, with touches of brown ink
36.9 x 51 cm

PROVENANCE:
Christopher Cone and Stanley J. Seeger, Whitby.

The sculptor, painter and graphic designer Charles Robinson Sykes is perhaps best known for the design of the Spirit of Ecstasy figure used on Rolls-Royce cars, which he executed in 1911. Born in Yorkshire to an artistic family, in 1898 Sykes won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London. He then established a successful career in the capital as both a fine and commercial artist. After 1911, building on his success of his work for Rolls-Royce, Sykes was asked to design the gold and silver cups for Ascot, and also received other commissions for ceremonial gold and silverware, as well as numerous trophies and medals. After the First World War he began to focus more on the commercial projects, works signed with the pseudonym ‘Rilette’. Over the next few years he produced numerous fashion drawings which filled the pages of the Sunday Dispatch and the monthly covers of the magazine Woman.