Art Institute of Chicago

Lane Scene at Night

John Atkinson Grimshaw (English, 1836–1893)

Date

1872

Medium

Oil on paperboard

Culture

Great Britain

Department

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

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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