Lot 41: Portrait of Mrs William Younger and her daughter Charlotte Mary

Charles Sims, R.A., R.W.S. (1873-1928) Portrait of Mrs William Younger and her daughter Charlotte Mary signed 'SIMS' (lower left) oil on canvas 72 x 60 in. (182.8 x 152.4 cm.)

182.8 x 152.4 cm.

London, Royal Academy, 1923, no. 154.

By descent in the family of the artist to the present owner.

This painting portrays the wife and daughter of William Younger (1857-1925) of Ravenswood, Melrose. Younger came from the notable family of brewers: his maternal uncle also founded McEwans. In 1902 William Younger married Katharine Theodora Dundas (1874-1961), and they had three children including a daughter, Charlotte Mary (1908-2000), later wife of the 13th Lord Reay, Chief of Clan Mackay. Katharine Younger and Sims are known to have enjoyed a lengthy correspondence and friendship after her husband’s death, and the artist spent much time at Ravenswood, where he met his untimely death. The artistic establishment sought to discredit his later, mystical works, claiming they were the products of a disturbed mind, but Mrs Younger wrote to the Present of the Royal Academy to vouch for her friend’s health. Exhibited in 1923 the painting displays Sims’s combined success in both portraiture and decorative mural painting. He was influenced by the work of Jules Bastien-Lepage and the monumental symbolism of Puvis de Chavannes, which he saw as a student at Atelier Julian in Paris. Sims was celebrated by contemporaries for his inventiveness: ‘Imagination he certainly has – a freshness and unconventionality of fancy which can be welcomed as singularly attractive – and he has developed both his powers of observation and his command over processes of painting in an uncommon degree’ (A. Lys Baldry, ‘The Paintings of Charles Sims’, The Studio, London, 1907, p. 90). After his death in 1928 his friend and fellow artist Harold Speed wrote that ‘Loveliness is not now the fashion in art, and her adorers are not so numerous or so healthy as they might be. The machine-made gods of modernity have made havoc of her worship… By the death of Charles Sims we are robbed of one of her ablest and most passionate adorers, and we shall long miss the joyous loveliness of the ‘Sims note’ that so often lit up the walls of our exhibitions’ (The Old Water-Colour Society’s Club, London, 1929, p. 45). Sixty-four works by the artist are found in British national collections, including Tate Britain.