Rare Grimshaw watercolour goes on show

View of Leeds from Woodhouse Ridge, by John Atkinson Grimshaw was painted in 1868 and is particularly rare as the self-taught artist, then 32, worked mostly in oils.

It shows a family group, including a dark haired woman who is understood to be his wife Theodosia, against the view from Batty’s Wood in Woodhouse across an increasingly industrialised Leeds looking towards St Chad’s Church in Headingley.

Last on display in the artist’s home city in 1979 as part of a touring exhibition, the work has now returned after it was bought at auction from a private owner for £31,000 by Leeds City Council, with help from the Victoria & Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund, the Art Fund, the Leeds Art Fund, the Friends of Leeds City Museums, the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society and the Richard Green Gallery, and will be proudly displayed at Leeds Art Gallery.

Grimshaw was born in Leeds in 1836, lived in Cliff Road, Hyde Park moving to Knostrop Old Hall in 1870, and was buried in 1893 in Woodhouse Hill Cemetery in Hunslet.

The painting will join 24 other Grimshaw works held in the Leeds museums and galleries collection.

The council’s assistant curator of fine art, Ted Wilkins, said: “I’m absolutely thrilled that we have managed to save this extremely rare and beautiful watercolour for the city’s collection.

“John Atkinson Grimshaw is one of Leeds’s most famous artists and it gives me great pleasure to have led the team that secured it for the people of Leeds to enjoy.”

Art Fund Director Stephen Deuchar said: “There can be no better place to house this significant work by Grimshaw, a distinguished local artist, than Leeds Art Gallery.

“We were so pleased to be able to help Leeds Art Gallery secure this fine work at auction.”