Sylvia Daoust, CM, CQ, RCA (24 May 1902 – July 19, 2004), born in Montreal, was one of the first female sculptors in Quebec. She studied at the Council of Arts & Manufactures and the École des Beaux-Arts, with Charles Maillard and Maurice Feliz, and later with Edwin Holgate at the Art Association of Montreal. She won many notable prizes for her work, which has been exhibited in institutions in the United States, Italy, and Canada. She is known for her portrait sculptures, and for revitalizing the traditions of liturgical art. Daoust was also one of the original members of the organization Le Retable d’Art Sacre, a group that helped transform the state of Roman Catholic churches in French Canada. Daoust died in Montreal in 2004 at the age of 102. Life and education Daoust was born on May 24, 1902 in Montreal, Quebec the eldest of seven children. From an early age she began drawing, sketching, painting and also sculpting clay figurines. The figurines caught the eye of the Sisters of St. Anne, who encouraged her to enroll at the École des Beaux-Arts de Québec. In 1915, she began studying at the Conseil des arts et manufactures with Joseph Franchère, Joseph Saint-Charles and John Young Johnstone. In 1923, Daoust enrolled in the École des beaux arts, which had just recently opened. In 1927, she graduated with a specialized teaching degree in drawing. In 1929, Daoust won the Lord Willingdon Competition, the first-place prize in an inter-provincial competition for sculpture and in the same year received a scholarship to study in France from the province of Québec She studied in France with Henri Charlier. She returned home in 1930, teaching drawing, anatomy, modeling, and sculpting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Québec City until 1943. Daoust then moved back to Montreal to be a professor of wood and stone sculpting at the Montreal School of Fine Arts (1943–1968). After her death in 2004, she was buried in the Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery in Montreal. Work The majority of Daoust's works are religious in content and form. They have been described as a combination of the formal characteristics of modernism with the austerity of sculpture of the Middle Ages. While she did extensive work in the classroom, 1948 marked the beginning her career in modernist art alongside fellow artist and peer, Paul-Émile Borduas. During the early 1940s movement of sacred