Atkinson Grimshaw, the self-taught Yorkshireman who made a good living with cosy night-time cityscapes, is often seen as a one-trick commercial pony rather than a serious artist. Well represented in UK collections, seen on the cover of history books and old-fashioned Christmas cards from elderly relatives, he is the sort of artist your eye might have frequently glided over. Nice but dull. Leeds Art Gallery's rather whimsically titled exhibition suggests it is leaning into that view, even perhaps hinting that viewers should not expect too much from what is largely their own collection of Grimshaw's works. The reality is more varied, interesting and challenging than that, partly because of the inclusion of contemporary artists, largely because Grimshaw himself defies expectations.
Nocturnes does not claim to be a retrospective and a certain amount of joining the dots is required by visitors to unravel the chronology and influences on his career. Early works have a distinctively Pre-Raphaelite interest in precise observation, possibly influenced by fellow Loiner, John William Inchbold. Whether Autumn Glory, The Old Mill was painted from a photograph or not, it has a luminosity and obsessive density of foliage that in combination give it an eerie gothicism. Grimshaw later softened his style, enveloping the rectilinearity of townscapes and masted ships in a smudginess which suited his nocturnal lighting and gave his paintings a built-in glow of positivity. Boar Lane, Leeds takes you straight back to childhood Christmases, all chill air, bright lights and anticipation. But even works dominated by cool, lunar blues have an idealised calm: Nightfall on the Thames is an urban dream-forest of masts centred on the dome of St Pauls rather than a bustling, working, labour-filled and smoke-fueled port.
There are obvious comparisons with Whistler, made by the man himself and explicitly referenced by Grimshaw in his late Caprice in Yellow Minor, a rare venture into pure landscape and a light, white palette. Caprice is one of several surprising pictures: Sunday Night, Knostrop Cut, linked, in elegiac terms, to the artist's imminent death by the curators, has a warm luminosity and a dramatically emphasised sense of empty recession. Meanwhile Iris, a repeated subject, combines a rather fey winged nude with a minimal violet-hued landscape which reminded me of Klimt's later reductions of nature. Whilst some of these might stretch the definition 'nocturne', they share an entirely appropriate poetry. Grimshaw's attempt at social commentary, Reflections on the Aire - On strike, struggles to hit home for that very reason.
This dreamy poetry is felt equally strongly in the contemporary painters chosen for inclusion. Judith Tucker's moonlit caravan parks, exploit the same interplay of artificial and natural light, albeit with a more unsettling surrealism. Elizabeth Magill's mistily indistinct purples work beautifully with a rare Grimshaw watercolour landscape. Less sympathetic, in fact audibly intrusive, Roger's Palmer's The Remains provided a soundtrack that permeates the whole exhibition. Nocturnes has to fight again this, and its awkward location, a three room corridor on the ground floor sandwiched between the gallery shop and the toilets. It probably gets visitors in - it was certainly busy when I went on a weekday morning - but it feels the very opposite of moonlit calm.
Leeds Art Gallery must work with what it has: a brief glance into the adjoining library shows crumbling decoration and patches of damp. Certainly, make sure you visit the rest of their displays, which include more examples of Grimshaw's work and an excellent one room exhibition The Axis of Abstraction, Art in Cornwall and Yorkshire. Nocturnes establishes Atkinson Grimshaw as a painter of variety, poetry and urban optimism, and the inclusion of contemporary artists gives his work a relevance and modernity. Personally, I would love a proper retrospective of his work (the last was fifteen years ago at Harrogate's Mercer), including figurative and rural landscape paintings, and contextualising him amongst his contemporaries. But don't let's ask for the moon....
