British 1836-1893 Atkinson Grimshaw Gallery Grimshaw's primary influence was the Pre-Raphaelites. True to the Pre-Raphaelite style, he put forth landscapes of accurate color and lighting, and vivid detail. He often 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. By applying his skill in lighting effects, and unusually careful attention to detail, he was often capable of intricately describing a scene, while strongly conveying its mood. His "paintings of dampened gas-lit streets and misty waterfronts conveyed an eerie warmth as well as alienation in the urban scene." Dulce Domum (1855), on whose reverse Grimshaw wrote, "mostly painted under great difficulties," captures the music portrayed in the piano player, entices the eye to meander through the richly decorated room, and to consider the still and silent young lady who is meanwhile listening. Grimshaw painted more interior scenes, especially in the 1870s, when he worked until the influence of James Tissot and the Aesthetic Movement. On Hampstead Hill is considered one of Grimshaw's finest, exemplifying his skill with a variety of light sources, in capturing the mood of the passing of twilight into the onset of night. In his later career this use of twilight, and urban scenes under yellow light were highly popular, especially with his middle-class patrons. His later work included imagined scenes from the Greek and Roman empires, and he also painted literary subjects from Longfellow and Tennyson ?? pictures including Elaine and The Lady of Shalott. (Grimshaw named all of his children after characters in Tennyson's poems.) In the 1880s, Grimshaw maintained a London studio in Chelsea, not far from the comparable facility 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."[9] Unlike Whistler's Impressionistic night scenes, however, 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." Some artists of Grimshaw's period, both famous and obscure, generated rich documentary records; Vincent Van Gogh and James Smetham are good examples. Others, like Edward Pritchett, left nothing. Grimshaw left behind him no letters, journals, or papers; scholars and critics have little material on which to base their understanding of his life and career. Grimshaw died 13 October 1893, and is buried in Woodhouse cemetery, Leeds. His reputation rested, and his legacy is probably based on, his townscapes. The second half of the twentieth century saw a major revival of interest in Grimshaw's work, with several important exhibits of his canon.  Related Paintings of Atkinson Grimshaw :. | Nab Scar | Boar Lane,Leeds by Lamplight | Tree Shadows on the Park Wall,Roundhay Park Leeds | Spirit of the Night | In Peril |
Related Artists:
Reginald Marsh
American Social Realist Painter, 1898-1954,American painter, printmaker and illustrator. He returned from France to the USA with his American parents, Fred Dana Marsh (1872-1961) and Alice Marsh, who were also artists, in 1900. In 1920 he graduated from Yale University, New Haven, CT, where he had been art editor and cartoonist for the Yale Record. He moved to New York and became staff artist for Vanity Fair and the New York Daily News. By 1923 he had begun painting scenes of street life in New York in oil and watercolour. His first one-man show was held at the Whitney Studio Club in 1924. In 1925 he joined the New Yorker, to which he contributed regularly until 1931.
James Collinson
English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1825-1881 English painter. He was the son of a Nottinghamshire bookseller. He studied at the Royal Academy Schools, London, where he was a fellow student of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. Although quiet and unobtrusive, he caught the attention of critics when he exhibited the Charity Boy De but at the Royal Academy in 1847 (sold London, Christie, 26 Oct 1979, lot 256). The painting was praised for its truthfulness and use of minute detail. It was admired by Rossetti, who sought out Collinson and befriended him. The following year saw the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), which Rossetti invited Collinson to join. Around this date Collinson renounced Catholicism and became engaged to Christina Rossetti; possibly this influenced the other members of the PRB in favour of his election to their number. However, he was never a leading member of the Brotherhood.
Paul Frederick De Caselli
Swiss, 1775-1817