Lot 332
CHARLES SIMS (1873-1928)
'CRAFTS', CIRCA 1915
Estimate: £800 - £1,200
Auction: Lots 1 to 336 | 16th October at 10am
Description
oil sketch on board, inscribed lower left ARTS & CRAFTS EXHIBITION 1916, and lower right CHARLES SIMS/ M. ASHER/ J. MARTINDALE/ T. EMSLIE/ F. BROWN
Dimensions
35.5cm x 80.5cm (frame size 42.5cm x 87.2cm)
Footnote
Note: This is a preparatory study for the artist’s mural ‘Crafts’, made for the Municipal Hall at the Royal Academy’s Arts and Crafts Exhibition of 1916. Four of the most successful large decorative panels: Maurice Greiffenhagen's, The Arts of Peace; George Clausen's The Ancient Arts; Robert Anning Bell's The Awakening; and Charles Sims’ Crafts. On these walls the Academy had fielded its strongest team, each was a consummately skilled practitioner, highly experienced in the art of mural painting. These artists, with others, would receive major public commissions after the war, notably in the Palace of Westminster, thus fulfilling, in this area at least, the goal of the exhibition organiser and President of the Society, Henry Wilson.
Believed the have been lost, Sims’ vast mural canvas (30 feet wide) was recently found rolled up in the basement of the Academy. Sims was aided in the painting by a group of female students from the Royal Academy Schools: Rosalie Emslie, Florence Asher, Margaret Brown and Veronica Martindale, all credited in this sketch albeit with their initials entered the wrong way around.
