Godfrey Sykes (1824-1866) was a key figure in the decoration of the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum). Having begun his professional career as an apprentice to a Sheffield engraver, and later worked for himself designing showcards and silverware, in 1843 Sykes enrolled at the newly-opened Sheffield School of Design. This was one of the government schools established to enable working craftsmen to learn the elements of design. Sykes was appointed assistant master at the school in 1856. His association with the Museum began in 1859 when he was recruited by Henry Cole to assist with the decorative schemes for the 1862 Exhibition (the successor to the Great Exhibition of 1851) and the new Horticultural Society's garden buildings. Sykes's use of terracotta for external decoration prompted the decision to use it for the new museum buildings. As John Physick notes, 'Sykes was so highly regarded that the Board decided that "his views on questions of decoration [were] to be adopted in future."' (Physick, p, 58.) Sykes went on to design elaborate decorative schemes for the principal parts of the new museum buildings: the North and South Courts and the Prince Consort's Gallery.

Only three years before his own early death of a lung infection in 1866, Sykes designed the tomb in Kensal Green cemetery of another artist whose work was exceptionally well represented in the Museum's collections, William Mulready (1786-1863). Following his death, the South Kensington Museum held a memorial exhibition of his oil paintings, which included landscapes and genre scenes, and his architectural drawings.

This painting by Sykes is a close copy of a work of the 1630s in the National Gallery in London, which was in the past attributed to Velázquez. It is one of a series of copies of Old Master paintings produced by Sykes in the V&A’s collection, including Titian’s Venus of Urbino and Raphael’s The Judgement of Solomon and The Fall of Man. Unlike these works, which were probably made in order to show students and museum visitors in London paintings they were never likely to see in reality, Sykes’ Adoration of the Shepherds, the original of which was acquired by the National Gallery in 1853, was perhaps intended to be sent on loan around the country as part of a travelling exhibition. These exhibitions were first devised in 1855 by the curator J.C. Robinson, and were specifically devised for the benefit of regional art schools and to show their students oil paintings and watercolours ‘suitable for copying’ (1). This particular painting was purchased in 1866, the year of Sykes’ death.

Reference:

1) Susan Owens, ‘‘Straight lines are a national want’: South Kensington and Art Education Reform’, in Julius Bryant (ed.), Art and Design for all: The Victoria and Albert Museum (London: V&A Publishing, 2011), pp.75-81 (p.78).