Charles Sims (painter)

Charles Henry Sims RA (28 January 1873, Islington – 13 April 1928, St. Boswells) was a British painter of portraits, landscapes, and decorative paintings. Apart from his mainstream reputation, he is also considered an exponent of Outsider Art, as an artist whose work developed an idiosyncratic style through psychiatric disorder.

Born in Islington, London, Sims was the son of a costume manufacturer. Initially apprenticed in the drapery business, he moved to art in 1890 and enrolled at the South Kensington College of Art, before moving to Paris for two years at the Académie Julian. In the need of bursaries to support himself, he moved back to London and enrolled at the Royal Academy School in 1893. In 1895 he was expelled.

In 1897 he married Agnes, a daughter of the painter John MacWhirter.

From 1896, he developed an increasingly successful career, first exhibiting The Vine at the Royal Academy in 1896, and selling another painting, Childhood to the Musée du Luxembourg. An expert at portraying sunlit landscapes, he specialised in society portraits and neo-classical fantasies, typically idealised scenes of women, children or fairies in outdoor settings.

In 1906 a one-man show at the Leicester Galleries brought him critical and financial success, allowing him to relocate to the rural Fittleworth. In 1910 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Watercolour Society, and in 1915 to the Royal Academy.

The First World War was a traumatic experience for Sims. In 1914, his eldest son was killed, and he worked for a time as a war artist in 1918. Post-war, his work changed track, and he began to develop religious and reclusive tendencies. He was upset at this time by criticism of his portrait of George V, which he destroyed. Despite receiving the honour of the keepership of the Royal Academy in 1920, he resigned and went to the United States to paint portraits, but became disgusted with society and abandoned portraiture in 1926.

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