When this picture was rediscovered in 2014 it was stated that it had been painted for the proprietor of the Athenaeum Club in Melbourne and that Grimshaw had visited Australia in 1890 or 1891, a period during which little is known of Grimshaw's life. No evidence has been found to prove conclusively that Grimshaw went to Australia. The painting depicts Swanston Street in Melbourne, a wide and busy thoroughfare lit with gas-lamps and the glow from shop windows. On the right is a two-storey building bearing the name ‘Leviathan’ which was the Leviathan Clothing Store, one of Melbourne’s best-known department stores. On the left is the canopy of the Royal Mail Hotel, built in 1848 at the south-east corner of Bourke and Swanston streets; it was demolished in 1960. The advertisement on the side of the wall on the right was for the Artistic Stationary Company where small loan exhibitions of paintings were held in the 1880s. Grimshaw suggested the modernity of the city with the fashionable attire of the elegant pedestrians thronging the streets and with details such as the lines of electricity supply running down the streets on overhead wires. He conveyed the muddy texture of the wet dust-road by mixing a small amount of grit with his paint before applying it is thin layers over the canvas.