John Atkinson Grimshaw was influenced by John Ruskin and the meticulous work of the Pre-Raphaelites early in his career and began producing these small autumnal scenes in the 1870s. This example is typical in its use of a solitary female figure walking down a deserted road at dusk, and these evocative subjects proved extremely popular with his middle-class clientele. The settings were often based on the walled streets on the outskirts of his native Leeds, or elsewhere in Yorkshire, where he lived until the mid-1880s.
Many of these canvases date to the 1880s, when Grimshaw was facing a severe financial crisis that compelled him to substantially increase his productivity and make numerous repetitions and variations (as many as fifty a year). By 1885 he had moved to Chelsea and was increasingly influenced by the approach of James McNeill Whistler and his associates in the aesthetic movement.
Text: Yale Center for British Art.
