Description:
Gloucester Docks was painted in the last year of his life and was likely left unfinnsied but completed by his son. Grimshaw was born 6 September 1836 in Leeds. In 1856 he married his cousin Frances Hubbard (1835-1917). In 1861, at the age of 24, to the dismay of his parents, he departed from his first job as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway to pursue a career in art. He began exhibiting in 1862, under the patronage of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, with paintings mainly of birds, fruit, and blossoms.He became particularly successful in the 1870s and was able to afford to rent a second home in Scarborough, which also became a favourite subject.
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.
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."Unlike Whistler's Impressionistic night scenes, however, Grimshaw worked in a realistic vein: "sharply focused, almost photgraphic," 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.
The Main Basin at Gloucester was constructed as the terminus of the ship canal with an entrance from the Severn estuary at Sharpness. As the work was nearing completion, there was concern that the basin would not be large enough for the trade expected, and so an additional Barge Arm was constructed to ensure that the Main Basin could be kept free for sea-going ships. In addition, the Canal Company built a warehouse at the north end of the basin. The canal was formally opened on the 26 April 1827, and a huge crowd gathered to watch the first two vessels enter the basin amid the firing of guns and the ringing of church bells.Once the canal was fully operational, local merchants were soon taking advantage of the new facilities. Importing through Gloucester cut out the former need for transshipment at Bristol, where there were high port charges. Cargoes could be transferred direct to narrow canal boats which could carry the goods up the river and through the inland canals to supply the growing industrial towns of the Midlands. The geographical position of Gloucester so far inland was a tremendous advantage, and traffic was soon exceeding all expectations. As well as the trows and barges employed in the existing river and coastal trade, there were increasing numbers of two-masted brigs and schooners and some three-masted barques. Early imports included corn from Ireland and the Continent, timber from the Baltic and North America, and wines and spirits from Portugal and France. The main export was salt which was brought down the river from Worcestershire.
To cope with all this activity, warehouses were built around the Main Basin, an earlier dry dock was enlarged, and an engine house was built to augment the canal's water supply by pumping from the River Severn. To extend the quay space, Bakers Quay was constructed along the canal, and this was mainly laid out for timber yards. Large storage yards were necessary as the timber loading ports were iced-up during the winter and most of the imports arrived during the summer and autumn. Several of the yards were surrounded by high fences and were locked up under customs supervision so that foreign timber could be stored there without paying import duty. Some of the ships bringing timber from North America were locally owned, and they often carried emigrants on the outward journey.
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