DOI Heft:
No. 172 (July, 1907)
DOI Artikel:Baldry, Alfred Lys: The paintings of Mr. Charles Sims
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20775#0120
Charles Sims
is superficial and his investigation unintelligent,
his work will be lifeless and without conviction ;
but from a broad and thoughtful outlook comes
a confidence in production that will impress the
artist's individuality upon everyone who is capable
of analysing his methods.
In the same way, if he has not a thorough com-
mand over those technical processes by which he
puts his imaginings into a visible, pictorial form,
the message he desires to convey will be ineffectual
and unpersuasive. Fluent and expressive draughts-
manship, decisive brushwork, and sensitive manage-
ment of colour and tone, are of the greatest im-
portance to the painter of fancies, because without
these executive essentials, his pictures will have no
authority as serious works of art. His ideas,
haltingly set down, will seem artificial and unreal,
merely fantastic departures from sobriety, and his
work will create the wrong impression that he has
broken away from accepted conventions in a simple
spirit of perversity, and with a misconception of his
own powers. If he is not a sound craftsman, his
imagination will not serve him, and his shrewd-
ness of observation will lead to nothing; he will
rank, at best, as nothing more than a possibility—
as a man who might have done great things if he
had been able to give effect to his intentions.
It is as an artist who possesses in unusually
right proportion all the qualities needed by the
painter of imaginative pictures that Mr. Charles
Sims has to be considered. Imagination he cer-
tainly has—a freshness and unconventionality of
fancy which can be welcomed as singularly attrac-
tive—and he has developed both his powers of
observation and his command over processes of
painting in an uncommon degree. He attacks,
and overcomes, problems which are peculiarly
difficult to solve; and he succeeds, not because he
has discovered a convenient formula which assists
him to evade what is perplexing, but rather by
using all his resources to enable him to arrive at
the end he desires. Few present-day painters
equal him in acuteness of observation, fewer still
surpass him in mechanical skill; his equipment is
is superficial and his investigation unintelligent,
his work will be lifeless and without conviction ;
but from a broad and thoughtful outlook comes
a confidence in production that will impress the
artist's individuality upon everyone who is capable
of analysing his methods.
In the same way, if he has not a thorough com-
mand over those technical processes by which he
puts his imaginings into a visible, pictorial form,
the message he desires to convey will be ineffectual
and unpersuasive. Fluent and expressive draughts-
manship, decisive brushwork, and sensitive manage-
ment of colour and tone, are of the greatest im-
portance to the painter of fancies, because without
these executive essentials, his pictures will have no
authority as serious works of art. His ideas,
haltingly set down, will seem artificial and unreal,
merely fantastic departures from sobriety, and his
work will create the wrong impression that he has
broken away from accepted conventions in a simple
spirit of perversity, and with a misconception of his
own powers. If he is not a sound craftsman, his
imagination will not serve him, and his shrewd-
ness of observation will lead to nothing; he will
rank, at best, as nothing more than a possibility—
as a man who might have done great things if he
had been able to give effect to his intentions.
It is as an artist who possesses in unusually
right proportion all the qualities needed by the
painter of imaginative pictures that Mr. Charles
Sims has to be considered. Imagination he cer-
tainly has—a freshness and unconventionality of
fancy which can be welcomed as singularly attrac-
tive—and he has developed both his powers of
observation and his command over processes of
painting in an uncommon degree. He attacks,
and overcomes, problems which are peculiarly
difficult to solve; and he succeeds, not because he
has discovered a convenient formula which assists
him to evade what is perplexing, but rather by
using all his resources to enable him to arrive at
the end he desires. Few present-day painters
equal him in acuteness of observation, fewer still
surpass him in mechanical skill; his equipment is