John Atkinson Grimshaw
1836-1893 | British

A Figure in the Moonlight by John Atkinson Grimshaw

Signed "Atkinson Grimshaw" (lower right)
Oil on board

This mysterious and moody night painting captures a moonlit view of a quiet country lane, a signature subject of the Victorian artist John Atkinson Grimshaw. The painting’s ghostly glow and lone figure set a contemplative mood for which Grimshaw came to be known and loved, with his enthralling romantic aesthetics and remarkable skill making him one of the most celebrated painters of the Victorian age.

Adored by the public and his artistic contemporaries alike, the renowned James Abbott McNeill Whistler famously said, “I considered myself the inventor of nocturnes until I saw Grimmy’s moonlight pictures.” This painting, bathed in a beautiful ethereal luminosity, would have certainly elicited such a reaction from Grimshaw’s audience then, as it does still today. He was at the height of his career and commercial success by the 1870s, a period during which he rented a second home in Scarborough and began painting in and around this idyllic coastal area. This painting is both exquisitely detailed in the foreground and richly hazy as the winding path melts into the background, displaying Grimshaw’s unique ability to infuse any landscape with an alluring mix of realism and transcendence.

Born in Leeds to a former policeman, Grimshaw began painting while employed as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway. He married his cousin Frances Theodosia Hubbard in 1858, and by 1861 he abandoned his job in order to devote his time to becoming an artist. In his early work, Grimshaw was influenced by John Ruskin’s creed of ‘truth to nature’ and adopted the detailed Pre-Raphaelite technique of the Leeds painter John William Inchbold. By 1865, he turned to painting urban scenes in which moonlight and shadows were the most striking features, and it was for these works that he is best remembered. Examples of Grimshaw’s extraordinary paintings can be seen today in galleries worldwide, including the Tate Gallery in London and the Leeds Museum.

Painted 1875