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Signed,with artist's label on reverse; tempera on canvas, 27 × 36 in.(70 × 92 cm.)
Provenance: Carroll Gallery,London; Christie's, 9 June 1988 (lot 32)
Literature: Charles Sims, Charles Sims: Picture Making: Technique and Inspiration, London 1934,pp.171,120-2,129, plates 30-6

'Art may claim to be religious that,without conforming to any one dogma, seeks to express those needs of wonder and worship common to mankind. The beauty of holiness is the property of no one creed, each creed in its ritual celebrating those ideas of innocence, discipline and sacrifice shared by men of every faith, even by the true sceptic, the earnest enquirer into the mystery of our ultimate being' (Charles Sims, defending The Seven Sacraments of the Holy Church, quoted in Sims, Charles Sims: Picture Making:Technique and Inspiration, London 1934,p.21).
Between 1915 and 1917 Sims produced a remarkable series of paintings in the Italian Primitive manner,The Seven Sacramentsof the Holy Church.The first of these was titled The Baptism, a painting of identical size and composition to The Stork, except that the figures are clothed rather than naked, and address themselves to a saint baptising a baby, rather than to a stork. It is hard to say whether or not The Stork preceded The Baptism, or for what purpose Sims painted The Stork, which did not form part of The Seven Sacraments series. The landscape in the background is characteristic of the exceptional lyrical landscapes that Sims produced prior to and during the period of the First World War (see cat.15).
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Oil on canvas, 15 × 30 in. (37.5 × 75 cm.)
Provenance: Piccadilly Gallery, London, 1953;The Fine Art Society, December 1964 (no. 1596); private collection

‘All Landscape is weather. There is no scene too commonplace to become
interesting under the right conditions of weather, and none so lovely that it is
not found to be improved by a certain light at a certain hour or season. Every landscape has its day when it gives up its best; and the loveliest effects are amongst the most fleeting’ (Charles Sims, Charles Sims: Picture Making: Technique and Inspiration, London 1934, p. 21).

In his book, Charles Sims: Picture Making:Technique and Inspiration, Sims wrote extensively about the skills required to paint landscapes. Sims was, in the words of his son,‘one of the most sensitive and skilful interpreters’ of landscape painting in Britain (ibid. p. 118). Charles Sims himself remarked that ‘In England fine painting days are few; a fine, fickle day of storm and sun will yield material for months of work. The drawings can be done at leisure, but the colour must be put down instantaneously’ (ibid. p. 36).

A similar, slightly smaller work by Sims titled Autumn Landscape is in the
collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Thumbnail panels:

Charles Sims 1873-1928

Sims painted portraits, landscapes, and decorative paintings. He was one of that group of artists who continued to treat symbolic and romantic themes after the First World War.

He received his art education in London in the South Kensington and Royal Academy Schools, and in Paris in the ateliers of Julian and Baschet. His continental training probably accounts for his fluent handling of paint, and his confident treatment of space and atmosphere. These qualities rapidly gained him critical and academic success. A picture was bought for the Paris gallery of modern art, the Luxemburg, in 1897 and for the public gallery in Sydney, Australia in 1902. He held a highly successful one man show at the Leicester Gallery in 1906, and 'The Fountain' was bought for the Chantrey Bequest in 1908. Academic honours followed. He was elected Associate of the Royal Academy in 1908, Associate of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1911, Member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1914 and Royal Academician in 1915. He became keeper of the Royal Academy Schools in 1920.

The First World War proved to be a traumatic experience for Sims, from which he never recovered. His eldest son was killed and he was unbalanced by what he witnessed in France where he was sent as a war artist in 1918. His subsequent paintings often show signs of the mental disturbance which led him to resign his post at the Royal Academy Schools in 1926. In 1928, Sims committed suicide. A study of his life by one of his sons appeared in 1934, and a selection of his work appeared in the Last Romantics exhibition (Barbican Art Gallery, London 1989).