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Charles Sims:
A Kentish Landscape, circa 1914–16
Framed (ref: 558)
Oil on canvas, 15 x 30 in. (37.5 x 75 cm.)

Tags: Charles Sims oil

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.