John Atkinson Grimshaw painting Midsummer Night or Iris

Midsummer Night or Iris (1876) is one of Grimshaw's rare fairy paintings. It depicts Iris, messenger of the gods, pausing over a flickering pool at dusk to admire the waterlilies, disobeying her duty to wither autumn flowers. She hovers lit from within, her thin veil emitting a golden glow. The painting is essentially a study in iridescence and light, a lifelong obsession of the artist.

John Atkinson Grimshaw was a self-taught English Victorian painter born in Leeds in 1836, today considered one of the greatest nightscape and townscape artists of all time. He abandoned his job as a railway clerk at 24 to become a painter, against his parents' wishes, and went on to achieve considerable success in the 1870s. Though best known for his moody moonlit urban scenes, works like this one reveal a more poetic and experimental side, with techniques that recall both Turner and Whistler in their luminous layering of light.