[1] Rickly née Beard was born on October 5, 1895, in Poplar Bluff, Missouri.

She attended the St. Louis School of Fine Arts where her teachers included Oscar E. Berninghaus and Edmund H. Wuerpel.

In the 1920s Rickly attended plein air painting classes at the Provincetown art colony, taught by Charles Webster Hawthorne.

[3] In the early 1930s, during the Great Depression and after the closing of Provincetown art colony, Rickly along with Aimee Schweig and Bernard E. Peters established the Ste.

[5] Rickly went on to organize the group of artists known as The New Hats which advocated for Regionalism and other contemporary art.