Lane Scene at Night

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

Moonlight floods through tangles of dark, crooked branches, casting deep shadows on the ground that crisscross tracks imprinted in the damp earth by wagon wheels. The moon is just out of view but fills the scene with a strikingly eerie, bright-green hue. In the middle distance, a single cart makes its way down the muddy road, evoking the Romantic trope of lone travelers. John Atkinson Grimshaw has been hailed as “the painter of moonlight” precisely for moody, atmospheric works like this one. Self-taught, he began to paint in the 1850s while working as a clerk at the Great Northern Railway company in Leeds, England.

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