Posts in Category: English
John Atkinson Grimshaw
John Atkinson Grimshaw, September 6, 1836 – October 31, 1893, was an English painter of landscapes, town views, dockyards, and figure subjects. Born in Leeds, he worked as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway before leaving that employment in 1861 to become an artist. He was self-taught and began exhibiting in Leeds in 1862.
Grimshaw exhibited under the patronage of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society and later showed at the Royal Academy and the Grosvenor Gallery. He lived and worked in Leeds, maintained a second home in Scarborough during the 1870s, and painted subjects in Leeds, London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Hull, Scarborough, and Whitby. His sons Arthur and Louis, and two other children, also became painters.
His work is held by Leeds Art Gallery, which has the largest public collection of his work, as well as the Ashmolean Museum, Scarborough Art Gallery, Laing Art Gallery, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
![John Atkinson Grimshaw, View of Southwark Bridge at Night, 1882 Oil on panel, 11.5 × 19.5 in Ashmolean Museum, Oxford](https://danieljlieberman.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/09-view-of-southwark-bridge-at-night.jpg "Grimshaw, John Atkinson, 1836aEUR"1893; View of Southwark Bridge at Night")
Joseph Wright of Derby
Joseph Wright of Derby, September 3, 1734 – August 29, 1797, was an English painter of portraits, narrative scenes, and landscapes. Born and active for much of his life in Derby, he trained in London under the portrait painter Thomas Hudson from 1751 and returned for further instruction in 1756–1757. He also worked in Liverpool from 1768 to 1771 and travelled in Italy from 1773 to 1775.
Wright exhibited with the Society of Artists and the Royal Academy of Arts. He was associated with Derby’s scientific and industrial circle and with figures connected to the Lunar Society, although he was not a member of it. The printmaker William Pether reproduced several of Wright’s paintings as mezzotints, helping to circulate his work. William Tate was among his pupils.
Derby Museums holds the largest collection of Wright’s work, including paintings, drawings, prints, letters, and related archives. Other principal collections include the National Gallery, London; the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Tate; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
Arthur Rackham
Arthur Rackham, September 19, 1867 – September 6, 1939, was an English illustrator and painter born in London. He studied at the City of London School and the Lambeth School of Art.
Rackham worked as a book and magazine illustrator and became one of the best-known British illustrators of the early twentieth century. His illustrated books include Rip Van Winkle, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Rhinegold & the Valkyrie, and The Romance of King Arthur.
Rackham worked in pen and ink, watercolor, and book illustration. He died in Limpsfield, Surrey, in 1939.
Sir Godfrey Kneller
Sir Godfrey Kneller, August 8, 1646 – October 19, 1723, was a German-born painter who became the leading portraitist in England during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
He worked for the courts of Charles II, James II, William III, Mary II, and Queen Anne, and painted many of the major political, scientific, literary, and aristocratic figures of his period.
Kneller is best known for formal state portraits, court portraits, and the Kit-Cat Club series. He was knighted in 1692 and made a baronet in 1715.
