Figurative painter Sylvia Sleigh is known for her meticulously-rendered nude male portraits. She mines the art historical canon for stylistic and compositional inspiration, referencing French Impressionism and the British Pre-Raphaelites, among others. Sleigh was born in Llandudno, Wales and educated at the Brighton School of Art in England. She immigrated to the United States in 1961 and began exhibiting in New York in the late 1960s. She was active in the feminist movement and received numerous recognitions for her contributions to art including the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement from the College Arts Association in 2008 and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Caucus for Art in 2011. Her work had been the subject of major solo exhibitions, including at Tate Liverpool in 2013, and she is represented in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, among others.
