'Don't Lets Ask for the Moon...': Nocturnes and Atkinson Grimshaw
14 November 2025 - 19 April 2026
Leeds Art Gallery
John Atkinson Grimshaw's Moonlights from the 1880s brought the Leeds artist success and recognition, even from the crusading modernist American artist James McNeill Whistler.
This new exhibition brings together Leeds Art Gallery’s impressive collection of nocturnal pictures by the celebrated artist, including the latest acquisition Reflections on the Aire - on strike (1879) - likely to be one of the first paintings depicting the consequences of industrial action.
The show aims to shift our perceptions from Atkinson Grimshaw as a painter of place, providing a window of nostalgia onto a Victorian world. Alongside evocative images of nocturnal themes by four contemporary painters - Elizabeth Magill, Selma Makela, Judith Tucker and Joanna Whittle - and neon and photographic works by Roger Palmer, Atkinson Grimshaw can be seen here as a painter of modernity, possessed of a powerful poetry.
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