John Atkinson Grimshaw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Atkinson_Grimshaw

John Atkinson Grimshaw was born 6 September 1836 in Leeds. In 1856 he married his cousin Frances Hubbard (1835–1917). In 1861, at the age of 24, to the dismay of his parents, he left his job as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway to become a painter. He first exhibited in 1862, mostly paintings of birds, fruit and blossom, under the patronage of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society.[4] He became successful in the 1870s and rented a second home in Scarborough, which became a favourite subject.

Several of his children, Arthur E. Grimshaw (1864–1913), Louis H. Grimshaw (1870–1944), Wilfred Grimshaw (1871–1937) and Elaine Grimshaw (1877–1970) became painters.

He painted landscapes that typified seasons or a type of weather; city and suburban street scenes and moonlit views of the docks in London, Leeds, Liverpool, and Glasgow also figured largely in his art. His careful painting and skill in lighting effects meant that he captured both the appearance and the mood of a scene in minute detail. His "paintings of dampened gas-lit streets and misty waterfronts conveyed an eerie warmth as well as alienation in the urban scene."

In the 1880s, Grimshaw maintained a London studio in Chelsea, not far from the studio of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. After visiting Grimshaw, Whistler remarked that "I considered myself the inventor of Nocturnes until I saw Grimmy's moonlit pictures." Unlike Whistler's Impressionistic night scenes Grimshaw worked in a realistic vein: "sharply focused, almost photographic," his pictures innovated in applying the tradition of rural moonlight images to the Victorian city, recording "the rain and mist, the puddles and smoky fog of late Victorian industrial England with great poetry."

Grimshaw died on 13 October 1893 of tuberculosis and is buried in Woodhouse Cemetery, (now called St George's Fields), Leeds. His reputation rested on, and his legacy is based on, his townscapes. There was a revival of interest in Grimshaw's work in the second half of the 20th century, with several important exhibitions devoted to it. A retrospective exhibition "Atkinson Grimshaw – Painter of Moonlight" ran from 16 April 2011 to 4 September 2011 at Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate and subsequently in the Guildhall Art Gallery, London.

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From 1870 until his death in 1893, John Atkinson Grimshaw lived at Knowsthorpe (aka Knostrop) Hall, Leeds; a C17th Jacobean mansion. The hall, its gardens and the lane to the front (Knowsthorpe Lane) feature in many of his paintings The hall fell into disrepair after WWII and was demolished in around 1960. Its site now forms part of an industrial estate. Even in the day the hall, despite the depictions of a bucolic idyll, was in reality an oasis very close to the smoke and noise of the factories and mills of Hunslet. His painting "Reflections on the Aire –On Strike " (1879) gives an impression of the nearby surroundings.

One of John Atkinson Grimshaw's last art works was of the lock and canal nearby the hall. (Knostrop Cut (1893)).

In 1871/2 John Atkinson Grimshaw was commissioned by John Barran, Mayor of Leeds to paint three paintings to help promote the creation of Roundhay Park. "Tree Shadows on a Park Wall" is one of these paintings. Roundhay forms the subject of many of his subsequent paintings, Waterloo Lake and The Castle often feature.

In around 1876 John Atkinson Grimshaw rented a house in Scarborough named 'Castle-by-the-Sea'.

John Atkinson Grimshaw faced financial problems in 1879 and was forced to give up his house in Scarborough.

In the early 1880s he spent spent time in London. Many of his London paintings date from this period ("Reflections on the Thames, Westminster, London" 1880" , "Nightfall Down the Thames (1880)" and "The Thames Below London Bridge (1884) are examples). Later, from 1885-7, he lived in London and rented a studio in Chelsea, leaving his family back at Knostrop.

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1851 UK Census: Living at Brunswick Row, Leeds
Recorded living there are his parents, David (39), Mary (40), John Atkinson Grimshaw (14), Jonathan (10), David (8), Richard Atkinson Grimshaw (5) and Josiah (3).

1861 UK Census: Living at 46, Wilks St., Wortley In Parish Of Leeds, Yorkshire - West Riding
Recorded there are John Atkinson Grimshaw, his wife, Frances Theodosia and his brother, Jonathan.

1871 UK Census: Living at Knostrop Old Hall.
Recorded there are John Atkinson and his wife, Frances Theodosia and their children Clara M, Alfred A, Enid R F, Gertrude and Loiuis H and one female servant.

1881 UK Census: Living at Knostrop Old Hall (aka Knowsthorpe Hall).
Recorded there are John Atkinson Grimshaw, his wife, Frances Theodosia and their children Alfred A, Enid R F , Louis H, Wilfred A, Lancelot G, Elaine K and Elsie C and two female servants.

1891 UK Census: Living at "The Old Hall, Leeds, Leeds".
Recorded there are John Atkinson Grimshaw, his wife, Frances Theodosia and their children Enid R F, Louis H, Lancelot G and Elaine K.

John Atkinson Grimshaw died in 1893. In the 1901 UK Census his widow, Frances is recorded at Crab Lane Harrogate with her aunt, Sarah aged 85. Three of the children, Arthur E, Enid, Louis H,and a cousin, Fanny, are recorded living 183 Belle Vue Road, Leeds (Woodhouse).