Arts: Sims

Sims—not the Rear Admiral whose likenesses adorn the cover of this magazine, nor the Seattle lumberman whose name may be remembered*—but Charles Sims, R. A., portrait painter of smart repute in England, exhibited last week at the Knoedler Galleries, Manhattan.

Artist Sims paints what he sees with glittering fluency. A. Lys Baldry once declared that “few present-day painters equal him in acuteness of observation, fewer-still surpass him in mechanical skill. Although Mr. Sims’ work somewhat reflects the rhetorical stiffness of Mr. Baldry’s sentence, that is because he, like his critic, is a Britisher, and this quality is an immemorial part of the British intellect—an intellect never so ponderous as when it is airy and never so supple as when it is hard with scorn.

Epigrams are easily manufactured in synthetic prose; to produce them in paint requires a far greater technical equipment. Mr. Sims is a masterly epigrammatist. Almost every Sims picture in the Knoedler Gallery flashes with the slim lustre of a dinner table witticism, but most mordant of all is the portrait of King George V.

There sits His Majesty on a carpeted dais. Over his head a monstrous curtain is furled with droops of golden cable. His crown rests beside him; a sceptre leans in the crook of his arm; a sword is propped against his leg; the royal coat of arms, painted on the wall, has the look of an automobile trademark. And in the stiffness of the paper-doll body under its innumerable ribbons, sashes, badges and magnificent sweep of falling draperies—in the exaggerated dandyism of the spindling white-stockinged legs, in the pointed hands, in the dainty bearded face, burns a discomfort — the puzzled, enviable discomfort of the nouveau riche.

In Pittsburgh

When the World Series splashed to its rain-streaked, dramatic finish on Forbes Field, Pittsburgh, a handful of distinguished foreigners, with rain spurting in gentle rivers from the brims of their felt hats, left the field and proceeded to their hotels having learnt for the moment enough of how things are done in the U. S. They were in Pittsburgh with exactly the opposite idea—to show the U. S. how certain things are done in Europe. They had come to attend the opening of the Carnegie International Exhibition.

The exhibition in which 13 nations, including (for the first time since 1914) Germany and Austria, is the best that the Institute has presented. From year to year Director St. Gaudens has tried to take an impartial census—to substitute national attitudes for schools of art.

France. A rare still life by Forain (painted in 1872) already mellowed by time; a strongly accented brown nude by Derain; Edward Vuillard’s comfortable “Woman in Front of a Fireplace”; a curiously enervated drawing by Matisse; work by Menard, Besnard Danchez, Le Sidaner, Blanche; a full length painting by witty Guy Pene Du Bois of a nude woman seen from behind while she peeps through a slit in her curtain window at something in the next room.

Spain. The best of Zuloaga’s costly offerings, “T h e Castilian Shepherd”; abysmal sentimentalities by Daniel Diaz; a Picasso which, attempting a Greek austerity, falls into a British stiffness; emphatic paintings by Ramon and Valentin de Zubiaurre.

Germany. Nineteen pictures very varied, from 19th Century art plainly labeled “Made in Germany for Conservatives” to “Afternoon Tea” by Ernst Kirchner, wherein the tea table cants like a broken wing and the arches of the chairs leer with grotesque Gothic humor.

Italy. An impeccable little “Nude” by Ubaldo Oppi of Milan, which won a prize of $1,000; reticent violence in a dreaming young girl, “Cinthia,” by Felice Casorati.

U. S. One of George Bellows’ portraits of his mother; a group of flashy and characteristic Sargents; “Spring in a New York Skyscraper,” a large bright canvas by Childe Hassam.

*Addison Sims.