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What Techniques Did John Grimshaw Use?

  • September 16, 2022
  • 5 min read
What Techniques Did John Grimshaw Use?

John Atkinson Grimshaw has been called “the father of modern art,” and he’s certainly earned that title with his incredible paintings. He was born in 1819 and is considered one of the greatest artists. He was also an impactful teacher and advocate for the arts in Great Britain.

Grimshaw’s style is often compared to that of Vincent Van Gogh, but it’s more accurate to say that it’s more similar to a child’s painting: bright colors, simple forms, and a focus on composition rather than realism. Grimshaw’s work is known for its use of light, texture, and color—all characteristics which make it easy for viewers to identify with his works.

He began working as a portraitist at age 16—just after completing high school—and went on to exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1837 until he died in 1896. In addition to portraits, he also produced landscape paintings; however, they’re less popular today than his portraits because they’re not as recognizable or recognizable as “realistic” artworks like those produced by other artists during this period.

This article will discuss the techniques employed by John Grimshaw to create his many iconic paintings.

Most Famous Works

Grimshaw was educated at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. During this time, he became friends with other artists, such as Ford Madox Brown and John Everett Millais, who would later become famous for their work in painting.

Grimshaw’s first major work was “The Village Fair,” a painting from 1844 that depicts rural life during that period. His best-known works depict rural life in England during the 19th century. These include “The Greengage Girl,” which depicts a young woman picking greengages in a field; “The Ploughman’s Lunch,” which shows workers eating lunch outside during harvest time; “The Apple Gatherers,” which shows two women picking apples from a tree; and “The High Road to Hastings,” which shows travelers traveling along an old road through Hampshire County.

In addition, you can check John Atkinson Grimshaw paintings and his designs for furniture, including chairs and tables.

His Life

Although not much is known about John Grimshaw’s personal life, we will reveal some of his personal life in this section. While serving as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway, John Atkinson Grimshaw started painting. He faced vehement parental resistance, but after getting married in 1858 to a T.S. Cooper cousin, he was allowed to devote himself entirely to painting.

Grimshaw debuted his self-taught still-life paintings in Leeds in the 1860s. After three children passed away in his Leeds home in 1870, he had amassed enough wealth to rent a 17th-century mansion. He gave it the name Castle by the Sea, and it boasts a cliff-top location with excellent views of the north and south bays.

Grimshaw retrenched after experiencing an unidentified financial problem in 1880, moved back to Leeds, and increased his output to about fifty paintings a year. Around that time, he started incorporating more social realism into his paintings because nighttime is a suitable time to capture less good aspects of life.

John Grimshaw’s Technique

Throughout his career, Grimshaw’s subject matter and style remained largely similar; he worked tirelessly to perfect his extremely unique perspective. To replicate compositions numerous times, he occasionally employed a camera obscura to cast outline images onto oil paintings. 

He used sand and other substances with his paint to achieve the desired effects. Even though Grimshaw didn’t start a school, his oil paintings were copied and faked during his lifetime. He painted a variety of topics, including neo-classical subjects, landscapes, portraits, interiors, and fairy paintings, in addition to his most well-known moonlit urban views.

In the 1870s, he experimented with a free technique and painted historical figures, current women, and classical subjects in the style of Tissot, Lawrence Alma-Tadema. These latter experiments were particularly successful. However, the nighttime images, or “moonlights,” with which he is most frequently associated today, were the actual innovation at the time.

Grimshaw’s paintings are characterized by their bold use of color and luminous light effects, their dramatic composition with exaggerated figures, and their dramatic lighting effects. He was also a prominent personality in the Pre-Raphaelite movement, which was a reaction against the realism and grandeur of other Victorian painters.

Blackman Street, London – John Atkinson Grimshaw

Reputation and Legacy

Grimshaw didn’t leave any journals, letters, or papers behind. Instead, his townscapes are the foundation of both his legacy and fame. In the latter part of the 20th century, there was a renewed interest in Grimshaw’s work, and several significant exhibitions were held in its honor. “Atkinson Grimshaw – Painter of Moonlight” was a retrospective exhibition on display from 16 April to 4 September 2011 at the Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate and then at the Guildhall Art Gallery in London.

Conclusion

John Grimshaw was a trailblazer for many painters after him, and his works are still beautiful to behold today. He is best known for his implementation of vibrant color, especially in his urban landscapes, which led him to become one of the first impressionist painters working in Britain. If you want to learn about John Grimshaw more extensively, you can visit the website created in his honor, and you are sure to gain invaluable knowledge.

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