I love the little surprise each day when the new artwork is revealed, and this one made me say 'oh gorgeous'. When I looked more closely I found it was painted by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893), an artist I'd dismissed as a teenager. Grimshaw was from Leeds (like me), and there are several of his paintings in the Leeds Art Gallery. When I used to visit I'd walk quickly through that room in search of something more 'modern', wishing there was a Matisse or a Gauguin in the collection!!
Grimshaw was a Victorian realist, mostly painting urban scenes often at night or evening, big canvasses in oils of gas lit streets and misty waterfronts, they seemed very old fashioned to me.
This painting is watercolour and gouache on paper, which is different for a start, and it's a country scene not the city. But what grabs me is that wonderful sky and the bare winter tree on the right. It doesn't feel old fashioned to me, if anything it feels timeless, and it makes me want to go out with my paints and capture the sky at dusk and the shape of trees against the sky.
Apparently this painting is in the Leeds Art Gallery collection, I don't know whether it's on display, but hopefully next time I'm in England I'll get to see it in the flesh.
