John Atkinson Grimshaw, and tracing

If you’re not really an art person, or a modern art person, this is the art post for you. John Atkinson Grimshaw is the man I turn to when it comes to convincing non-art people the value of art beyond photorealism.

Before we get onto Atkinson Grimshaw himself though, we should talk about the relevance of tracing. The Hockney-Falco thesis claims that the history of improvement in art closely mirrors the improvement in lenses and technology for tracing through pinhole cameras and projection devices. If you wish to know more then Hockney’s book certainly makes a convincing case. At the time of this book’s release (2001) The Guardian titled their article on it “Portrait of the artist as a cheat”. Because this is how it is viewed by many. Hockney himself argues we shouldn’t care if an artist traced or not but if you look at contemporary praise of art from the 1500s through to the 1800s it is consistently highly focussed on the artist’s skills in realism.

Capturing your scene truthfully and accurately was the mark of great skill. With this focus on quality of realism it’s obvious how using a projector to trace outlines would be seen as a low skill activity, or at the very least weaken an artist’s credentials. It says a lot that we have proof of designs by inventors for portable camera obscura’s as far back as the 1690s, yet no self confessed proof that anyone used one in the following 100 years. A good analogy for how it was viewed might be a digital artist nowadays who used AI to assist them in their works.

All this matters to our story because as the title suggests, John Atkinson Grimshaw, resident of Victorian Britain, openly used camera obscura methods to trace his designs. He was even said to have been lousy at drawing in perspective, although I have wasted several hours failing to verify this claim so take it with a large pinch of salt. This tracing technology, cemented for 200 years of thought as one that diminished credentials, combined with Atkinson Grimshaw’s lack of formal art education and working class background create the perfect trifecta for a kitsch local artist confined to pocket change sales and local walls. Yet this was not how his career went.

He defied all of this with a marvelously specific set of skills. There are few examples out there quite as strong as his of “Do one thing really well”. Jack of No Trades, Master of One. This work here is my favourite piece of John Atkinson Grimshaw’s, the buildings and ships were all placed into the scene with tracing, and yet I couldn’t care less.

Liverpool From Wapping - 1875

These pieces still draw in people like myself to this day due to his masterful control of light and dark; he painted many moonlit scenes like the following and one of the biggest names of the time, James Whistler, said “I considered myself the inventor of nocturnes until I saw Grimshaw’s moonlit pictures”… Which is high praise to say the least. It’s fair to say that Whistler was too busy being drawn in by the warm oranges and gloomy greens to consider whether he should judge Grimshaw’s technical abilities at perspective drawing.

At The Park Gate - 1878

A close inspection of a Grimshaw sky shows there is little to it, often a work of only a few colours, but a combination of a spectacular appreciation for light and tone, and some diligent self taught skills, combine to produce works that are often seen to give an image more tone than reality itself. His glooms were gloomier than reality, the orangey hues from windows glowed warmer, and the wet pavements glistened a little more than the truth. This exaggeration of the senses creates scenes that differ from photographs despite being based on tracings, and allow his work to captivate even the non-discerning eye 150 years after its creation.

This is no accident either, we must credit him fully for his longevity, as he is reported to have been a keen reader and investigator of early emerging camera technologies. Spending time around the emerging camera and creating scenes of real places himself it’s almost impossible to suggest he didn’t stop to ponder what made his work more desirable to patrons than photographs. His answer to that was mood. I don’t think it’s a stretch to call some of these gloomy pieces ethereal, in a way photography couldn’t capture for at least another 100 years.

I will ask you for one leap of trust if you’ve made it this far. I think there is a correct way to view an Atkinson Grimshaw digitally. If you can’t now then come back to this later. Open an image full screen on a PC monitor or larger, and turn all the lights off, close the curtains and let the orange glows flow out into the room. To put yourself in the shoes of Grimshaw looking down the street late at night, I believe you must join him there in the dark gloom.