The Golden Beam

John Atkinson Grimshaw, famous for his moonlit and colourful urban landscapes, is regarded as ‘one of the great painters of the Victorian era’. Born in 1836 in a back street of Leeds, he later worked as a railway clerk before taking up full-time painting. Following success, a move in the 1860s to Headingley would inspire the moonlit view entitled ‘A Lane in Headingley, Leeds’ and also ‘A Golden Beam’, depicting a grand house on a leafy suburban lane in the last of the evening light.