John Atkinson Grimshaw

Sale: Sotheby's, New York, April 20, 1983, lot 157, illustrated
Private collection (acquired at the above)
Thence by descent

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting is in beautiful and original condition. The canvas is unlined. The work is not retouched. It seems that the work was cleaned and varnished recently. It should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

A Golden Idyll is an iconic composition that showcases Grimshaw’s mastery of light and atmosphere. Unlike the artist’s works that depict the great cities and the fishing villages of Britain (such as Liverpool Quay by Moonlight, 1887, Tate, London; or Reflections on the Thames, Westminster, 1880, Leeds Museums and Galleries), there are no landmarks with which to situate the exact location of this place. The sense of mystery is enhanced by the atmospheric golden light flooding the scene, and the anonymous figure who inhabits it. The Victorian audience had a strong appetite for such romantic intrigue and it was a prevalent theme in the novels, plays and poetry of the period. Grimshaw himself was inspired by the writings of Wordsworth, Browning, Shelley and in particular Tennyson. As Alexander Robertson points out, “a few lines from Tennyson’s Enoch Arden seem to demonstrate this most succinctly:

The climbing Street, the mill, the leafy lanes,
The peacock-yew tree 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 drying leaves”
(as quoted in Alexander Robertson, Atkinson Grimshaw, London, 1988, p. 86)

In his paintings, Grimshaw sought to contrast the manmade and the organic – opposing forces symbolic of an age of industrialization. In Grimshaw’s time, the natural world was being tamed, confined, and destroyed like never before. In A Golden Idyll, as in many of Grimshaw’s most compelling compositions, the notion of conclusion and decay is paramount, the end of the day when the sun sets, the end of the year as the trees are stripped of the leaves, and the end of the daily routine of the maid making her solitary way home.