John Atkinson Grimshaw

Edward Arthur Henry Pakenham, 6th Earl of Longford (Sale: Christie's, London, 16 March 1973, lot 93)

Alexander Robertson, Atkinson Grimshaw, 1988, no. 98, p. 112 (illustrated)

November Morning on the River Wharfe, Yorkshire, may lay claim to be a ‘Pre-Raphaelite landscape’ and is a rare example of John Atkinson Grimshaw’s work from the 1860s, painted when he was only thirty. Grimshaw had resigned from his job as a railway clerk five years earlier to pursue a career in art. He had no formal training in painting and was from a strict family of Baptists who opposed his choice of profession – his mother is said to have turned off the gas-supply to the room he used for painting and even burnt his paints in the fire. He had to learn for himself by studying the work of others and by painting what he saw in the landscape around him. He was self-taught and determined, and under the patronage of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society he started to exhibit in 1862. In the still-lifes and landscapes painted by Grimshaw in the 1860s there was an emphasis on painting nature with accuracy. This was unmistakably inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites and the writings of John Ruskin, who declared in his work Modern Painters in 1843 that artists should strive for a ‘bona fide imitation of nature… rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing...’ At first, Grimshaw landscapes concentrated on close-up studies of mossy banks in woodland, such as Boulders in Storsforth Wood of 1863 (sold in these rooms, 15 December 2016, lot 13) and A Mossy Glen of 1864 (Bankfield Museum, Halifax). By 1866 when he painted November Morning on the River Wharfe, Yorkshire, he had begun to paint more expansive landscapes with sparkling and brilliant sunlight through the morning mist rising from the torrents of water in the boulder-strewn Wharfe. The ancient beech tree, clad in ivy and moss, has a grandeur and almost mythic presence in this landscape that has changed little for thousands of years. This sense of the immortality of nature was a theme that is often present in these early landscapes which have a religious fervour which can either be interpreted as celebrating the creative magnificence of God or the old pagan stories of the sylvan deities. The russets, gold and malachite-green of November Morning on the River Wharfe, Yorkshire  anticipates the magnificent study of autumnal decay Ghyll Beck, Barden, Yorkshire of 1867 (collection of Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber). It is likely that November Morning on the River Wharfe, Yorkshire was painted in Lower Wharfedale on the stretch of river between Barden and Bolton Abbey, probably downstream from the rapids known as The Strid. Improved railway and wagon connections made in the 1840s meant that this area was easy to reach for day-trips from Leeds. Although Grimshaw sometimes worked from photographs it is likely that the present picture was painted from studies made on the spot.