She and their children, sometimes captured in photographs, would become frequent models and subjects in his paintings. In 1897, he married Agnes, a daughter of the painter John MacWhirter. He also found success as a painter of society portraits. He specialized in neo-classical fantasies, typically idealized scenes of women and children (and sometimes fairies and fauns) in outdoor settings. In 1897 he exhibited Childhood, which "established his mastery of the effects of sunlight" it was shown at the Paris Salon of 1900 and purchased by the French State (it is now at the Musée d'Orsay).
In the need of bursaries to support himself, he moved back to London and enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools in 1893, but "his Parisian insolence and cavalier ways alienated the authorities, and in 1895 he was unceremoniously expelled." ĭespite the expulsion, Sims "had gained the confidence to start painting bacchanalian scenes of revelry, executed with astonishing flair," including The Vine in 1896, his first painting to be exhibited at the Royal Academy. Turning his back on a mercantile career, he decided to study art, and in 1890 enrolled at the South Kensington College of Art before moving back to Paris for two years at the Académie Julian. Initially apprenticed in the drapery business, at age 14 he was sent to Paris, where he learned French. As his son and biographer Alan Sims writes, "His lameness…remained always a considerable burden," and "had much to do with the peculiar direction of his art towards playful subjects and athletic technique," so that "the most notable characteristics" included "a prepossession with the swift movement of flawless bodies bathed in sunlight and air" and "a determination to escape from the actual confines of physical life into a region of his own fancy.…The charm of his happiest pictures is heightened by this pathos." This disability was to have a profound influence on his work as an artist.
His earliest memories were of painful physiotherapy, and as a child he was unable to fully participate in physical activities. An injury in infancy threatened his life and resulted in lifelong lameness in one leg.
3 Professional controveries, personal upheavalsīorn in Islington, London, Sims was the son of a costume manufacturer.
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