Charles Robinson Sykes was born on 18 December 1875 in Brotton, a mining village near Cleveland in the north-east of England. His father and uncle were talented amateur artists and encouraged him to pursue a professional career. Sykes began his artistic training at Rutherford Art College in Newcastle. In 1898, he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London, where he studied drawing, painting and sculpture, under tutors including the anatomist Arthur Thomson, illustrator Walter Crane and sculptor Edouard Lanterie. Sykes remained in the capital after graduating and quickly established himself as a multi-talented artist.

“Best known to posterity as the creator of the Spirit of Ecstasy, Charles Sykes was a multi-talented artist with deep connections to the principal players in the Rolls-Royce story. His professional and artistic relationship with Eleanor Thornton was pivotal in his work, for which she was perhaps his greatest muse; he also benefited from two powerful patrons in Lord Montagu of Beaulieu and Claude Johnson, on whose behalf he produced some of the finest and most enduring works of art. His paintings of Rolls-Royce motor cars uniquely capture their grace and beauty, and in his depictions of their almost exclusively aristocratic owners, he provides a fascinating window into a world that has now vanished,” said Andrew Ball, Head of Corporate Relations and Heritage, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.