'A bright memory to remain' : the life and works of Charles Sims RA (1873-1928)

Holmes, H. Cecilia (2005) 'A bright memory to remain' : the life and works of Charles Sims RA (1873-1928). Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates the life and work of the English painter Charles Sims RA (1873-1928). It takes the form of a monograph and examines key themes of Sims' career within a chronological framework. The study makes consistent reference to the Sims Archive — the artist's studio contents recently brought to light by the author in negotiation with the artist's family and currently in the possession of Northumbria University. For the first time Sims' working practices and motivations have been explored in detail, thus contributing to knowledge of this particular neglected painter and more generally allowing some additional insight into the problems besetting and opportunities afforded to British artists of his generation. Sims' career spanned a transitional period in British art history which is currently being reassessed by art historians: the debates surrounding the effects of European modernism on British art, the inevitable impact of the Great War and the search during the 1920s for a visual language appropriate to modern life. Sims negotiated disparate experiences and preoccupations in an interesting way, and produced a stylistically diverse body of work in his continued search, I argue, for an alternative to modern reality. He attempted the combination of ancient religions, past art and modern experience into pictorial idylls that were simultaneously familiar and unattainable. The thesis aims to explore Sims' inspiration and reassesses his career within the context of his better known contemporaries by cross-referencing information held in national and international collections, libraries and archives with the hitherto unseen material here.

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