John Atkinson Grimshaw

John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893) was best known for his night scenes. In 1861 he left his job as a railway clerk, to his parents' distress, and embarked on life as an artist. He greatly admired the Pre-Raphaelites, but the feeling was not mutual. He did reasonably well. In the 1880s he had a studio in Chelsea, London, near that of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who also loved to paint the night, and Whistler praised Grimshaw's work. (A Yorkshire Home, 1878)