.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
In around 1867 Grimshaw began to move away from his early Pre-Raphaelite inspired landscapes of the Lake District, with their bright palette and emphasis on Ruskin’s adage of ‘truth to nature’, to experiment with moonlit scenes. The effect of moonlight and the darkness of night naturally led him away from an emphasis on incredibly detailed depictions of landscapes, to concentrate on the atmosphere that the evening light created. These nocturnes put him in the pictorial tradition of Joseph Wright of Derby and the Pether family, although it is said that Whistler, Grimshaw’s contemporary and another proponent of the art, claimed ‘Grimmy’ as the ‘inventor’ of ‘nocturnes’.
During the 1870s and 1880s Grimshaw started, almost exclusively, to produce moonlit scenes, often showing autumnal lanes, or the harbours and streets of the expanding Victorian urban environment. Depicting the pedestrian experience of exploring these towns after dark, often with a figure lost in a moment of reverie, Grimshaw soon built up a growing clientele in the growing wealthy middle classes of Victorian Britain. With a particular focus on the docks at Whitby, Hull, Liverpool and Glasgow (as shown here), as well as the mansions and environs of Leeds, Grimshaw found increasing popularity in the industrial north. Demand for his work occasionally outstripped supply and it helps explain the repetition in his choice of subject matter that makes him so easily identifiable today. Nevertheless, the compositions always vary slightly, they are never exact replicas.
On the Clyde, Glasgow was painted in 1879 when the artist was fully established in his métier, and the year in which increasing debts prompted him to move to London from Leeds to try and reverse his fortunes. The painting depicts many of the hallmarks of Grimshaw’s dock scenes: a green palette, the solitary figure lost in contemplation in the foreground, silhouetted against a wall, the twinkling yellow lights, and the sharpness of the foreground eventually blurring into a misty distance. One particularly striking feature of this composition is the sheer number of paddle steamers moored in the harbour, each placed at a slight angle to create the sense of the rocking motion of the sea. The strong diagonals and the relatively high horizon of the composition may owe a debt to the influence of Whistler, or to Grimshaw’s use of photography in creating his compositions.
During the 1870s and 1880s Grimshaw started, almost exclusively, to produce moonlit scenes, often showing autumnal lanes, or the harbours and streets of the expanding Victorian urban environment. Depicting the pedestrian experience of exploring these towns after dark, often with a figure lost in a moment of reverie, Grimshaw soon built up a growing clientele in the growing wealthy middle classes of Victorian Britain. With a particular focus on the docks at Whitby, Hull, Liverpool and Glasgow (as shown here), as well as the mansions and environs of Leeds, Grimshaw found increasing popularity in the industrial north. Demand for his work occasionally outstripped supply and it helps explain the repetition in his choice of subject matter that makes him so easily identifiable today. Nevertheless, the compositions always vary slightly, they are never exact replicas.
On the Clyde, Glasgow was painted in 1879 when the artist was fully established in his métier, and the year in which increasing debts prompted him to move to London from Leeds to try and reverse his fortunes. The painting depicts many of the hallmarks of Grimshaw’s dock scenes: a green palette, the solitary figure lost in contemplation in the foreground, silhouetted against a wall, the twinkling yellow lights, and the sharpness of the foreground eventually blurring into a misty distance. One particularly striking feature of this composition is the sheer number of paddle steamers moored in the harbour, each placed at a slight angle to create the sense of the rocking motion of the sea. The strong diagonals and the relatively high horizon of the composition may owe a debt to the influence of Whistler, or to Grimshaw’s use of photography in creating his compositions.