JOHN ATKINSON GRIMSHAW
1836 - Leeds - 1893
Ref: CC 152
The waning glory of the year
Signed and dated lower right: Atkinson Grimshaw / 1882;
signed, dated and inscribed on the reverse: "The waning
glory of the year" / Atkinson Grimshaw / 1882 +
Oil on canvas: 19 x 30 in / 48.3 x 76.2 cm
Frame size: 28 x 39 in / 71.1 x 99.1 cm
Provenance:
Private collection
Christie’s London, 15th June 1990, lot 131
Private collection
Sotheby’s New York, 7th May 1998, lot 261;
Richard Green, London [AS 357];
private collection, USA, 2000
Redolent of autumn, Grimshaw’s golden lane scenes are greatly sought after, the pale, delicate tonality of the setting sun, superbly juxtaposed with the rich, russet warmth of his tree-lined streets strewn with fallen leaves. In these serene, nostalgic images, including paintings at the Yale Center for British Art and the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Grimshaw captures the beauty to be found in the fading light of the golden season. As in his early, Pre-Raphaelite works, Grimshaw takes delight in observing the details of nature away from industrial life, carefully revealing the elegant, tapering branches and gilded, furrowed ground. Calligraphic patterns of lichen and ivy which cover the walls, brilliantly reflect the exquisite tracery of the boughs above, while dappled tufts of grass and moss in the foreground follow the curving path into the distance and autumn’s waning glow. To further enhance the remembrance of days gone by, Grimshaw has included a figure in eighteenth century costume, a device used by many Victorian painters and novelists to evoke a happier, golden age.
The large mansion on the left, veiled by trees and the failing light, may be based on Knostrop Old Hall. By 1870, Grimshaw had become successful enough to move into a home more suitable for an important local figure. He found his ideal residence at Knostrop Old Hall, a seventeenth century mansion about two miles from the centre of Leeds, which features in many of his paintings. One of the earliest of these is Knostrop Hall, early morning, painted in 1870, ostensibly a fantastical celebration of the artist’s new home. Grimshaw’s combination of archaising architectural elements with an evocative twilight tonality seems to reflect the passage of time, inducing a contemplation of the past. Alexander Robertson, the expert on Grimshaw writes in his monograph: ‘For Grimshaw, living in a real Jacobean manor house, it would seem that past and present were equally real; just as myth and legend were to be plundered for subjects, so actual and historical houses could be put together to form an archetypal mansion…Most of Grimshaw’s suburban lanes tantalize the spectator by looking very familiar and yet are quite unidentifiable.’[1]
Evening glow, c. 1884 (oil on canvas)
Yale Center for British Art, Paul
Mellon Collection, USA
[1] Alexander Robertson, Atkinson Grimshaw, Phaidon, London 2000, p.95.
