Known for his city night-scenes and landscapes, John Atkinson Grimshaw was a Victorian artist described by British art historian Christopher Wood as a “remarkable and imaginative painter”.
Hailing from Leeds in England, Grimshaw’s first job was as a clerk for Great Northern Railway.
Much to the dismay of his parents, he left the job at age 24 to pursue a career as a painter.
John Atkinson Grimshaw and the Great Northern Railway
Leaving a steady job with a growing industry must have seemed foolhardy, but Grimshaw’s passion and talent for art were all he needed to make a success of his life.
Exhibiting for the first time just a year later under the patronage of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, he showed paintings of birds, fruit, and blossom.
It wasn’t until the 1870s that his career really took off.
Influenced primarily by the Pre-Raphaelites, he painted landscapes with precise use of colour and lighting, often focusing on the changing seasons or the weather to bring vivid detail and realism to his work.
But it is the moonlit views of cities and suburban streets, of Docklands in London, Hull, Liverpool, and Glasgow that he is best remembered for.
paintings of dampened gas-lit streets and misty waterfronts conveyed an eerie warmth as well as alienation in the urban scenePhilip J. Waller.
Sharply focused, almost photographic, Grimshaw poetically applied the tradition of rural moonlit scenes to the city, with its rain puddles, mists, and the smoky fog of late Victorian industrial England.
Grimshaw evokes the very feeling of chill in the night air or the damp of mists at dawn’s early light.
John Atkinson Grimshaw was the Painter of Moonlight.
London Bridge – Night by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1884
Park Row, Leeds by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1882
Westminster Bridge by Moonlight by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1880
Liverpool Quay by Moonlight by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1887
The Gossips, Bonchurch, Isle of Wight by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1880
Hull Docks at Night by John Atkinson Grimshaw
Evening Scene by the Docks, Hull by John Atkinson Grimshaw
Burning Off, a Fishing Boat at Scarborough by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1877
On the Clyde, Glasgow by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1879
Lights in the Harbour, Scarborough by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1879
Moonlight on Lake by John Atkinson Grimshaw
Liverpool Docks attributed to John Atkinson Grimshaw
Bonchurch, the Isle of Wight by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1880
Night Vigil by John Atkinson Grimshaw
Liverpool from Wapping by John A Grimshaw, 1875
A moonlit street after rain by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1881
Blackman Street, Borough, London by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1885
Hampstead by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1881
Glasgow, Saturday Night by John Atkinson Grimshaw
A Moonlit Landscape by John Atkinson Grimshaw
Humber Docks Hull, John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1884
A Yorkshire Home by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1878
Nightfall down the Thames by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1880
Street after the Rain in the Moonlight by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1881
Glasgow Docks by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1881
The Thames by Moonlight with Southwark Bridge, London by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1884
The Old Hall Under Moonlight by John Atkinson Grimshaw
Figure Overlooking Waterloo Lake, Rounday Park, Leeds by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1872
Old Chelsea by John Atkinson Grimshaw
Near Hackness, a moonlit scene with pine trees by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1875
Canny Glasgow by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1887
Heath Street, Hampstead by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1882
Street after the Rain in the Moonlight by John Atkinson Grimshaw
Whitby by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1878
Under the Moonbeams by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1887
The Broomielaw Glasgow by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1889
Forge Valley, near Scarborough by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1875
Whitby, from the East Side by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1877
Heaven’s Lamp by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1886
Lovers in a Wood by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1873
The Lovers by John Atkinson Grimshaw
Briggate, Leeds by John Atkinson Grimshaw
A moonlit country road by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1877
Reflections on the Thames, Westminster by Grimshaw, John Atkinson, 1879
The Tryst by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1886
At the Park Gate by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1878
Full Moon behind Cirrus Cloud from the Rounday Park Castle Battlements by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1872
Home Again by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1877
November by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1879
Scarborough by Moonlight by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1876
Boar Lane, Leeds by Lamplight by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1881
Whitby Harbor by Moonlight by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1862
Moonlight, Wharfedale by John Atkinson Grimshaw
Silver Moonlight by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1880
London Bridge – Half Tide by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1884
A Moonlit Evening by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1880
Harbor Scene by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1878
Greenwich, Half Tide by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1884
The Custom House, Liverpool, Looking South by John Atkinson Grimshaw , 1890
Gloucester Docks by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1890
Thames Moonlight by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1880
Nightfall down the Thames by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1880
Southwark Bridge and St. Paul’s by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1883
