John Atkinson Grimshaw A Forgotten Artistic Genius

From Wikipedia: John Atkinson Grimshaw (6 September 1836 – 13 October 1893) was an English Victorian-era artist best known for his nocturnal scenes of urban landscapes. Today, he is considered one of the great painters of the Victorian era, as well as one of the best and most accomplished nightscape and townscape artists of all time. He was called a “remarkable and imaginative painter“ by the critic and historian Christopher Wood. Grimshaw’s love for realism stemmed from a passion for photography, which would eventually lend itself to the creative process. Though entirely self-taught, he is known to have used a camera obscura or lenses to project scenes onto canvas, which made up for his shortcomings as a draughtsman and his imperfect knowledge of perspective. Some admirers claimed that his paintings appeared to “show no marks of handling or brushwork“, while others “were doubtful whether they could be accepted as paintings at all“. However, many recognised his mastery of colour, lighting and shadow, as well as his unique ability to provoke strong emotional responses in the viewer. Jaims McNeill Whistler stated, “I considered myself the inventor of nocturnes until I saw Grimmy’s moonlit pictures.“