Background
Grimshaw was born in Leeds, United Kingdom, on September 6, 1836. He was the son of David, an ex-policeman, and Mary Grimshaw.
Grimshaw was born in Leeds, United Kingdom, on September 6, 1836. He was the son of David, an ex-policeman, and Mary Grimshaw.
John Grimshaw was a self-taught painter.
Grimshaw began painting while working as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway. He faced bitter opposition from his parents. However, at the age of 24, to the dismay of his parents, he quit his job to become a painter. He first exhibited his works in 1862, mostly paintings of birds, fruit and blossom. The show was held under the patronage of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society.
He and his family moved in 1866 to a semi-detached villa. By 1870, Grimshaw had become successful enough to rent a 17th-century mansion. He called it Castle by the Sea, it had magnificent views of both the north and south bays. The move to the coast inspired much of the John Grimshaw's most attractive works, throughout his career he was always attracted by ships, the sea and docks, in fact, all things connected with the sea.
In the 1870s he experimented with a looser technique and with classical subjects in the manner of Lawrence Alma-Tadema. His historical subjects and contemporary ladies in the manner of Tissot became particularly successful. However, the real breakthrough at that time was his night-time scenes the "moonlights". In the middle of the 1870s, he rented a second house in Scarborough, which became a favourite subject.
The artist also made trips to Liverpool and London in search of material. John Grimshaw painted mostly for private art patrons and publicly displayed only 5 works at the Royal Academy between 1874 and 1886 and one at the Grosvenor Gallery. In his works, he usually depicted towns and docks, including Leeds, Scarborough, Glasgow, Liverpool, Whitby and London.
John Grimshaw's style and subject matter changed little during his career. Notwithstanding, he endeavoured constantly to refine his own very individual vision. He was interested in photography and sometimes used a camera obscura to project outlines on to oil canvas; it enabled him to repeat compositions several times. Sometimes he also mixed sand and other ingredients with paint to get the effects that he wanted. Grimshaw's oil paintings were forged and imitated in his lifetime. Though he was best-known for his moonlit town works, he also produced landscapes, interiors, portraits, fairy pictures and neo-classical subjects.
Grimshaw's later artworks included scenes from the Greek and Roman empires, and he painted literary subjects from Longfellow and Tennyson - pictures including Elaine and The Lady of Shalott. In the 1880s, Grimshaw maintained a London studio in Chelsea, not far from the studio of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. But around this period of time, John Grimshaw suffered some unknown financial crisis, returning to Leeds and expanding his output to around fifty paintings a year.
He continued to execute his moonlights during the 1880s, particularly of street and dockside scenes. Grimshaw's paintings depicted the contemporary world but avoided the dirty and depressing aspects of industrial towns.
John Grimshaw was a gifted painter, best known for his poetic nocturnal landscapes. Some of his artworks were Nightfall on the Thames, Spirit of the Night, Reflections on the Thames, and Shipping on the Clyde.
Today, he is considered one of the most renowned painters of the Victorian era, as well as one of the best and most accomplished nightscape, and townscape, artists of all time.
The second half of the 20th century was a revival of interest in Grimshaw's oeuvre, for instance, several important exhibitions devoted to the artist were held. A retrospective exhibition "Atkinson Grimshaw - Painter of Moonlight" ran from April 16, 2011, to September 4, 2011, at Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate and subsequently in the Guildhall Art Gallery, London.
Art pieces by Grimshaw are represented today in the Gloucester Museum and Art Gallery, the Bradford City Art Gallery, the Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead, the Bankfield Museum, Halifax, the Guildhall Art Gallery and the Tate Gallery, London, the Harrogate Museums and Art Gallery, the Huddersfield Art Gallery, the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island, the Harris Art Gallery, Preston, the Nelson-Atkins Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri, the Leeds City Art Gallery, the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, the Scarborough Art Gallery, the Pannett Gallery, Whitby, the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Brest, France, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Shepparton Art Centre, Welsford, Victoria, Australia and the King George VI Art Gallery, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
Endymion on Mount Latmus
Under the Moonbeams
The Heron's Haunt
In the winter
Blue Belle
Woman on a path by a cottage
An Extensive Meadow Landscape with Geese by a Stream
Hampstead
A Mountain Road, Flood Time
The Lighthouse at Scarborough
Golden Autumn
Twilight, The Vegetable Garden
London Bridge Half Tide
Canny Glasgow
Park Row, Leeds
A Burnsall Valley
Knostrop Hall, Early Morning
Spirit of the night
Humber dockside, Hull
A Golden Country Road
Elaine
Old Chelsea
Landscape in the Lake District
Summer
The Trysting Tree
Portrait of the artist's wife, Theodosia, as Ophelia
Battersea Bridge
The Rector's Garden, Queen of the Lilies
Roundhay Lake, Leeds
Bowder Stone, Borrowdale
View of Heath Street by Night
Autumn
Dame Autumn has a mournful face
Autumn Morning
Windermere
Liverpool from Wapping
Under The Harvest Moon
Liverpool Customs House
Moonlight
The Heron's Haunt
Evening, Whitby Harbour
Arriving in the hall
The Butterfly
Whitby Docks
Boars Lane, Leeds by Lamplight
A moonlit lane
Luxury
Spring
The Old Hall Under Moonlight
Iris
Lane In Cheshire
Stapleton Park near Pontefract Sun
Salthouse Dock, Liverpool
Snowbound
Blea tarn at first light, Langdale pikes in the distance
Old Chelsea
Midsummer Night
Gourock, Near The Clyde Shipping Docks
Wimbledon Park, Autumn After Glow
The Seven Arches Adel Woods
Lights in the Harbour
Shipping on the Clyde
Sixty Years Ago
Saturday night, on the clyde at Glasgow
Greenock Dock
Dulce Domum
Golden Light
Autumn Gold
In the Pleasaunce
Knostrop Cut, Leeds, Sunday Night
Il Penseroso
The Lovers
Whitby from Scotch Head
A Lane In Headingley, Leeds
The Turn of the Road
Spirit of the Night
Dido
Reekie, Glasgow
Wharfedale
Moonlight After Rain
Golden Eve
Lea Hurst, Kent
Nightfall on the Thames
Figure on a moonlit lane
The lotus gatherers
A Wintry Moon
Evening, Knostrop Old Hall
An Autumn Lane
Boar Lane, Leeds
Salthouse Dock, Liverpool
October Gold
Hampstead Hill, Looking Down Heath Street
Day Dreams
Tree Shadows on the Park Wall, Roundhay Park, Leeds
Lovers in a wood
Still Life of Birds Nest with Primulas and Blossom
The little botanist
Reflections on the Thames, Westminster
A Manor House in Autumn
The Thames Below London Bridge
A Dead Linnet
Autumn Glory: The Old Mill
Whitby Harbor by Moonlight
Two Thousand Years Ago
Forge Valley, Scarborough
Roundhay lake, From Castle
The Sere and Yellow Leaf
A Golden Beam
Waterloo Lake Roundhay, Park Leeds
Sunset from Chilworth Common, Hampshire
The Cradle Song
A Mossy Glen
London Bridge Night
The Lady of Shalott
Colwith Force
Whitby Sands, sunset
In the Golden Gloaming
November Afternoon, Stapleton Park
Humber Docks, Hull
Moonlight on the lake Roundhay Park Leeds
Under the moonbeams, Knostrop Hall
A Wet Road By Moonlight, Wharfedale
Poachers
Whitby
The Lady of Shalott
Wooded valley, probably Bolton Woods Lovers in a woodland clearing a pair
Landscape with a winding river
Barden Tower
Under the Moonbeams
Full Moon behind Cirrus Cloud from the Roundhay Park Castle Battlements
Silvery moonlight
Glasgow Docks
Saint Cecilia
In Peril (The Harbour Flare)
Roundhay lake
Forge Valley, Scarborough
An Autumn Idyll
Greenock
Blackman Street, London
Snow and mist
The Chill of Autumn
Iris
November Moonlight
Liverpool Quay by Moonlight
Quotations: "I considered myself the inventor of nocturnes until I saw Grimmy’s moonlight picture."
In 1856 Grimshaw married his cousin Frances Hubbard. John and Frances became parents to 15 children, but only six of them reached adulthood. Several of their children, including Arthur E. Grimshaw, Louis H. Grimshaw, Wilfred Grimshaw and Elaine Grimshaw, followed their father's steps and became painters.
Arthur Edmund Grimshaw (1864-1913) was an artist, composer, organist and also a conductor. He was the master of the choir at Leeds Cathedral, as well as a conductor of the Leeds Symphony Orchestra.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was an American painter, etcher and lithographer, known for his paintings of nocturnal London, striking and stylistically advanced full-length portraits and brilliant etchings and lithographs.
