[4] From 1874 to 1875 he studied in Paris and picked up influences from the latest Realist tendencies in French sculptures, especially from Auguste Rodin and Paul Dubois.

In 1883 he moved to Copenhagen, which he found a better working place, and had his breakthrough with the sculpture A barbarian woman carries her dead son home from the battle, created during a stay in Rome that same year.

It was acquired by the brewer Carl Jacobsen, the son and heir of Carlsberg-founder Jacob Christian Jacobsen, who was a great admirer of both classical and modern sculpture and was building an ever-growing private collection which in the end turned into the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek[5] Sinding created a number of sculptures, among others Mother in Captivity, which won him the Grand Prix at the Exposition Universelle (1889), Two figures (1889), and Young woman at her husband's body / The Widow (1892).

Many of Sinding's sculptures are credited to realism, but together with Danish sculptor Niels Hansen Jacobsen, among others, are by many considered much more in the style of Symbolism.

Assisted by Franz von Jessen, Sinding wrote an autobiography entitled En Billedhuggers Liv (1921).