THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY British painter John Atkinson Grimshaw is known for his urban scenes with the moon glowing on dockyards and city streets or the amber glow of shop windows visible in the sooty nightfall. His paintings, 50 of which are now on display in a gallery in London, are unusual in the poetic beauty they ascribe to industrial settings. As Hermes Westbury wrote:

John Atkinson Grimshaw was fascinated by modern industry, frequently painting the commercial centres of Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow, Scarborough and Hull. He painted at night, using moonlight to transform the sooty reality of the industrial North into an image of romance and mystery: air thick with pollution becomes an atmospheric mist enveloping the dark figures; moonlight reflects off cobbles, glistening with recently fallen rain; long shadows are thrown across the foreground by the golden lights illuminating the shop fronts.

Grimshaw’s works now fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars each. The painter, however, was not rich. His wife gave birth to 16 children, ten of whom died in childhood, and he struggled to support his large family.

Liverpool, John Atkinson Grimshaw

Liverpool Docks. John Atkinson Grimshaw

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