An October Afterglow

In 1870 Atkinson Grimshaw acquired the lease of Knostrop Old Hall, a seventeenth-century manor house by the River Aire, two miles east of the centre of Leeds. Knostrop was to be the artist’s home for the rest of his life and it became the subject of many paintings, as well as the inspiration for more fantastical compositions. Although a capriccio, this painting shares a similar viewpoint with Knostrop Old Hall, Early Morning, 1870 (A. Robertson, Atkinson Grimshaw, 1988, p. 39, illustrated). As with many other paintings by Grimshaw, it is an autumnal scene, reflecting the artist’s pre-occupation with change and decay, and allowing him to revel in the depiction of light.