John Atkinson Grimshaw

Originating with his finely detailed Autumn Glory: The Old Mill (1869), Grimshaw painted a series of desirable, evocative Autumnal scenes throughout the 1870's and 1880's. The paintings depicted suburban, idyllic lanes bordered by mossy stone walls, covered by arching branches and often anchored by a composite manor of aged grace.  Grimshaw shared his exact contemporary J. J. J. Tissot's passion for brilliant autumn golds, oranges and rich browns, as found in the later's October of 1877 or L'Orpheline of 1879.  Autumn Glory displays this fiery palette, where a radiant light reflects off the many natural surfaces and illuminates a solitary woman.  Grimshaw uses a recessive path to place the viewer walking directly behind her, sharing the warmth of the blazen sky and reminiscing upon sunsets past.

Grimshaw championed the Victorian idealization of the suburbs.  He sought to imbue their leafy streets with the Romantic ideals of eternal love, the cycles of nature and heart-felt loss.  His paintings are the visual embodiment of Tennyson and the Romantic poets.  More than simply illustrating their verses, Grimshaw used a painted canvas to evoke the poems mood and atmosphere.  The following two Tennyson passages offer literary examples of the language that inspired Autumn Gold.

In Autumn, parcel ivy-clad; and here
The warm-blue breathings of a hidden hearth
Broke from a bower of vine and honeysuckle:
One look'd all rosetree, and another wore
A close-set robe of jasmine sown with stars:
This had a rosy sea of gillyflowers
About it; this, a milky-way on earth,
Like visions in the Northern dreamer's heavens
                                                from Aylmer's Field

The small house,
The climbing street, the mill, the leafy lanes,
The peacock-yewtree and the lonely Hall,
The horse he drove, the boat he sold, the chill
November dawns and dewy-glooming downs,
The gentle shower, the smell of dying leaves...
                                                from Enoch Arden

Grimshaw constructed his fantastical rural manors from a creative source similar to Tennyson's poetry.  Both the poems and the paintings concern the passage of time, the influence of science over human actions and the changing cycles of nature.  In both genres these aged suburban houses are presented as comforting locations for which all these aspects of life are contemplated (See David Broomfield, Atkinson Grimshaw, 1836-1893 (exhibition catalogue), Leeds City Art Gallery, 1979-80, p. 18).