John Gunson Atkinson Sold at Auction Prices

John Gunson Atkinson (act.c.1849-c.1880) British. A River Landscape, Oil on Canvas, Signed, 8" x 16", and a co

John Gunson Atkinson (act.c.1849-c.1880) British. A River Landscape, Oil on Canvas, Signed, 8" x 16", and a companion piece, a Pair (2).

John Gunson Atkinson (act 1849 - 1880), oil on

John Gunson Atkinson (act 1849 - 1880), oil on canvas in gilt frame - Moel Siabod from Llugwy, signed and inscribed on reverse, 19cm x 34cm

John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893)

The Harbour Flare signed and dated 'Atkinson Grimshaw/1879+' (lower right) and signed, inscribed and dated 'The beacon. Atkinson Grimshaw. Leeds 1879+' (on the stretcher) oil on canvas 30 x 50 in. (76.2 x 127 cm.) PROVENANCE with Alexander Gallery, London, 1976. with Maurice Sternberg Galleries, Chicago, from whom purchased, 1977. LITERATURE A. Robertson, Atkinson Grimshaw, Oxford, 1988, p. 67. EXHIBITION London, Alexander Gallery, Atkinson Grimshaw, 1976, no. 19. The Pre-Raphaelites and their Times, 1985, no. 25. Distant Prospects and Familiar Shores, 1996, no. 13. Space and Light, 1999, no. 7. NOTES This painting, from a series of three, is one of the most dramatic explorations of the combination of moonlight and firelight in Grimshaw's oeuvre. Its subject is the harbour flare, lit to guide ships back to port on stormy nights, between which and the spume of the wave to the right the animated figures appear as staffage. The picture relates directly to Burning Off, a shipping boat at Scarborough (Scarborough Art Gallery, 1877) and In Peril (Leeds City Art Gallery, 1879) which are almost identical compositions. The present picture is the last of the trio in private hands. The subject may have been the result of a convergence of influences. Shortly after the Grimshaw family moved to Scarborough in 1876, to rent the house known as 'The Castle by the Sea', they witnessed the spectacular conflagration of Sir Joseph Paxton's Saloon of the Scarborough Spa. Grimshaw commemorated the event with Sic Transit Gloria Mundi: The Burning of the Spa Saloon, emulating Turner's The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, Westminster, of 1834 (Philadelphia Museum of Art). The painting may have been commissioned by Thomas Jarvis, the wealthy Scarborough brewer who built 'The Castle by the Sea', and who acted as Grimshaw's most important patron at this date. It is Jarvis who is generally credited with turning Grimshaw's work in a new direction and encouraging the artist to paint more moonlight scenes. This development found parallels in the work of Whistler, American born, but Paris trained, whose Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (Detroit) became the subject of the famous libel case involving Ruskin, after it had been exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery of 1877. Whistler himself later acknowledged the connection (the pair were briefly neighbours in Chelsea in the 1880s), reputedly uttering: 'I thought myself the inventor of Nocturnes until I saw Grimmy's moonlit pictures'. Though now principally famous for these moonlit scenes, Grimshaw's career followed a remarkable progression. Born the son of a policeman, he found initial employment as a railway clerk until his marriage to his cousin, Theodosia Hubbard, who was also a cousin of the artist Thomas Sidney Cooper (see lots 47 and 299). Theodosia encouraged her husband's artistic ambitions, and in 1861 he retired from the Great Northern Railway and started exhibiting still lives and landscapes. A tour of the Lake District in 1868 resulted in pictures of startling Pre-Raphaelite detail, while their move to Knostrop Old Hall, near Leeds, in 1870 encouraged works in more autumnal hues. Later in his career he found inspiration in depicting the ports of Whitby, Glasgow and London. Inventive in his technique he was one of the first artists to use photography to his own ends, and in some of his canvases, sand can be seen to be mixed with pigment to achieve the textures he desired. Although he rarely exhibited at the Royal Academy or the Grosvenor Gallery his work was much in demand from patrons and dealers in the north of England and can still be found in many collections there.

John Atkinson Grimshaw (British, 1836-1893)

Spirit of Night signed and dated 'Atkinson Grimshaw 1879.' (lower left) oil on canvas 321/2 x 48 in. (82.5 x 122 cm.) Painted in 1879 PROVENANCE Mrs I.G. Appleby (by 1979); Sotheby's Belgravia, 6 October 1980, lot 13. Acquired at the above sale by the present owner. EXHIBITION Leeds, Leeds City Art Galleries, Atkinson Grimshaw, October - November 1979, no. 64 (loaned by Mrs I.G. Appleby on a label on the stretcher). NOTES Fairies and Fairy Tales presented the Victorian artist with a vehicle to explore taboo subjects such as sex, nudity, violence and even drugs, and in return, the Victorian audience was a ready consumer of such fantastical tales. After all the imagery provided them with an escape from the materialistic realities of the ever-growing industrialist society they lived in. As Christopher Wood states we "tend to think of the Victorians as stern and moralistic, staring grimly out at us from early photographs, in their black top hats and frock coats. But Dickens was right in his perception that underneath that deceptively utilitarian surface, the Victorians yearned for 'some great romance'. "In their art, their literature and their architecture, they were arch-romantics and dreamers, the true heirs to the Romantic Movement. In art they gave us Pre-Raphaelitism, the greatest and most long-lasting romantic movement in English art. They also gave us some of the most extraordinary fairy paintings ever produced in any country at any time" (C. Wood, Fairies in Victorian Art, England, 2000, p. 8). Grimshaw produced a limited number of canvases in this genre. Besides the present work, there are only two other compositions, both handling the figure of Iris, the messenger of the Gods (both at the Leeds City Art Galleries). In all three paintings, the figure of the nude is the same model despite minor differences in her positioning, gesture and the coloring. Grimshaw loved to experiment with prisms to catch the effect of seeing coloured light and used such effects in this series of pictures. In the present work, the fairy is hovering above a village located by the sea under the moon lit evening sky that reflects off of her translucent skin and shimmers in colors of the rainbow on her wings. "It is a remarkably effective and haunting fairy image, and one can only wish Grimshaw had painted more of these, and fewer versions of Liverpool docks. The fewer other nudes he painted in this way are all of classical subjects, such as Diana the Huntress and Ariadne on Naxos " (Wood, op. cit., p. 129). The painting originally bore a tablet label with a quote from Shelley's Night : "Wrap thy form in a mantle grey/Star in wrought!/Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;/Kiss her until she be wearied out./Then wonder o'er city and sea and land,/Touching all with thine opiate wand -/Come, long sought!". Alex Robertson has confirmed the authenticity of this work.

John Gunson Atkinson (fl.1849-1879) Near Ulpha Kirk House, on the River Duddon signed JG Atkinson lr, also signed and inscribed with title verso, oil on canvas 61 x 91.5cm (24 x 36in)