JOHN ATKINSON GRIMSHAW (BRITISH, 1836-1893) 19th century oil...

Estimate

£20,000 - £30,000

JOHN ATKINSON GRIMSHAW (BRITISH, 1836-1893)
19th century oil on canvas.Titled Under the Silvery Moonlight
Fully signed, titled and dated in ink on the stretcher verso “Under the Silvery Moonlight, Atkinson Grimshaw, 1880”
Further inscribed : “2672, Trees near Chapeltown, Leeds”.
Original canvas and stretcher with stencil mark for Windsor & Newton.
Held in a gilt frame
Sight 34cm x 44cm
Stretcher 35.5cm x 46cm
Frame 61cm x 71cm

Provenance: With John Mathieson & Co, Fine Art Dealers and Artist Supplier of 20 Frederick Street, Edinburgh, with partial label fixed to stretcher.

Private family collection, Buckinghamshire, for over 60 years.

Notes:

In 1879 Grimshaw incurred heavy debts ‘having guaranteed a bill for a friend who then decamped and he spent the rest of his life trying to produce enough pictures to pay off that debt.” (P.149 European Painting & Sculpture 1770 - 1937 in the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. Despite increasing his output to almost 50 paintings a year - a number of which remain untraced - Atkinson Grimshaw was still trying to pay off the debt when he died.

In 1880, Grimshaw embarked for London in an effort to clear the debt and to produce new work for a new audience of buyers. He rented rooms at Trafalgar Studios in Manresa Road, Chelsea, near James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Later, Whistler famously stated: “I considered myself the inventor of Nocturnes until I saw Grimmy’s moonlit pictures” (J.M. Whistler, quoted in L Lambourne, Victorian Painting, 1999, p.112).

The method of only signing and titling verso on the stretcher is often to be found in Grimshaw's work. Also of note is the unique method of numbering and abbreviated symbols he used, and can be seen verso on the stretcher in the present example.