1836 -1893 · Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow, Scarborough and London

Moon, wet cobblestones and harbor mist make John Atkinson Grimshaw the great visual poet of the Victorian night city.

John Atkinson Grimshaw was born in Leeds in 1836. Employed as a clerk by the Great Northern Railway, he decided in 1861 to become a professional painter despite family opposition. Largely self-taught, he first observed the botanical precision and light colors of the Pre-Raphaelites. His first landscapes, still lifes and views of houses paid almost microscopic attention to leaves, stones and seasons. Grimshaw then developed his most personal domain: the street or the moonlit harbor. Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow, Scarborough and London then developed their most personal domain: the street or the moonlit harbor. Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow, Scarborough and London became theaters where modern commerce met an ancient atmosphere. In Liverpool Quay au moonlight, masts and warehouses dissolve in cold light reflected by the ground. Boar Lane, Leeds transforms windows, omnibuses and passers-by into urban rhythm. Salthouse Dock combines humidity, silhouettes and the maritime industry, while Thames Reflections widens the night towards Westminster. Grimshaw carefully prepares his compositions and sometimes uses photographic processes to capture perspective and silhouette, but his color transforms the document into vision. Installed for a time in Knostrop Old Hall near Leeds and owned a house in Scarborough, he enjoyed success with industrialists and traders in the North. James McNeill Whistler admired his nocturnal, yet very different in their precision. Died in Leeds in 1893, Grimshaw left one of the most lasting images of Victorian modernity between gas, steam, rain and moon. The "John Atkinson Grimshaw" selection notably compares Liverpool Quay in the moonlight and Boar Lane, Leeds. His reading favors drawing.

Grimshaw paints the city after the noise: the moon cools the facades, the rain turns the cobblestones back on and a few silhouettes are enough to make the whole metropolis feel.