Canny Glasgow
Artist: John Atkinson Grimshaw (English, 1836-1893)
Date: 1887
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid, Spain
Description
This painting is one of the later works of John Atkinson Grimshaw, who devoted his life to painting, who believed: "Music (except composing) is ephemeral-Art (painting and so on) is eternal-relatively speaking."
This painting captures the unique 19th-century clamour and atmosphere of the dockside in Glasgow, with the masts and rigging of the ships creating linear patterns in the sky: "The rigging has a rich, smudgy feel, where lines sink into the background surface. The skyline and distance are hazy with enveloping gloom, every the mud on the road is painted with care so that it catches the light from the lamps and shop windows. The usual Grimshaw figures and carriages also seem fresh and spontaneous images. Here the artist has created a rare sense of place and time, a scene of modern life which yet has a quality of distance and mystery."
