St. Cecilia. Atkinson Grimshaw. 1862. Oil on panel with arched top; 12 1/16 x 8 inches (30.7 x 20.2 cm), original frame. Signed “J. A. Grimshaw” and dated 1862, lower right. Private collection. Click on image to enlarge it.
St. Cecilia is one of Grimshaw’s first exhibited paintings as well as one of his earliest figurative works traced thus far. It is also certainly one of his most Pre-Raphaelite figurative paintings, both in terms of its subject and technique. Most of Grimshaw’s painstakingly detailed early landscapes were strongly influenced by John Ruskin and the first phase of Pre-Raphaelitism, probably largely through the example of the slightly older Leeds artist John William Inchbold, whose work Grimshaw knew and admired. Although Grimshaw’s “Pre-Raphaelite period” of the 1860s lasted only a short time, it resulted in some of his most beautiful and important landscapes. Later Grimshaw’s figurative paintings were impacted by the Aesthetic Movement and became influenced by classical painters like Lawrence Alma-Tadema and also the contemporary genre subjects of the Anglo-French painter J. J. Tisssot.
Saint Cecilia is one of the great Pre-Raphaelite subjects. She was a Christian martyr who became the patron saint of music. Her earliest depiction by the Pre-Raphaelites is D. G. Rossetti’s famous illustration for Tennyson’s poem “The Palace of Art” in the Moxon Tennyson, published in 1857. It is possible that Grimshaw’s painting may have been inspired by Tennyson as well because Grimshaw was a great admirer of the Victorian poets and Tennyson in particular. Saint Cecilia is unique in Grimshaw’s oeuvre and he was never to do anything similar again. It is executed in the early Pre-Raphaelite technique of painting on a white wet ground that gives the work its particular luminous qualities. The treatment of the subject may have been inspired by Pre-Raphaelite works that Grimshaw would have seen in the in the extensive collection of Thomas Edward Plint, a Leeds stock and share broker. In 1862 Grimshaw was invited to exhibit at the Philosophical Hall in Leeds and amongst the pictures in this exhibition was D. G. Rossetti’s St George and the Princess Sabra, lent by a local collector, Miss Ellen Heaton. Rossetti’s picture may have influenced the same medievalism and intense colours seen in Grimshaw’s St. Cecilia.
Of Grimshaw’s known early figurative works, the quality of the draughtsmanship is highest in Saint Cecilia. Broomfield and Robertson have noted that: “It comes something of a shock, considering the grasp of painterly technique to be seen in the landscapes of 1863 and 1864, to see Grimshaw’s obvious problems with figure painting. Meditation and the portrait of the artist’s wife as Ophelia seem clumsy and crudely painted” (25). As early as 1863 Edmund Bates, who was to become the second owner of Saint Cecilia, remarked on “those hands quivering with the power and harmony of their own wondrous skill – in his St. Cecelia and certes there needs be no other eulogy to rouse their admiration and esteem” (9).
St. Cecilia was to be drawn and/or painted by many artists within the Pre-Raphaelite circle. In addition to D. G. Rossetti, other artists included Elizabeth Siddal, Edward Burne-Jones, Simeon Solomon, Arthur Hughes, J. M. Strudwick, C. F. Murray, J. W. Waterhouse, Marie Spartali Stillman, Sidney Meteyard, and E. R. Frampton. Grimshaw version appears to be unique, however, in portraying St. Cecilia playing a harp rather than an organ.
Bibliography
Broomfield, David, and Alexander Robertson. Atkinson Grimshaw 1836-1893. Leeds City Art Gallery. Ilkley: Scolar Press, 1979.
Bates, Edmund. “Observations on ART PROPER. Its dignity and true principles and aim, with hints on the successful cultivation of individual tastes, having special reference to the Collection of Pictures now exhibiting in the Philosophical Hall, Leeds and notes on some of the principal works,” in a letter to Joseph Dempsey Holdforth, Esquire’, Leeds, 1863. Quoted in Broomfield, David and Robertson, Alexander. 1979.
Last modified 7 June 2021