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London Bridge - Night Signed and dated 1884; signed, dated and inscribed with the title and Knostrop Hall, Leeds on the reverse Oil on canvas: 20 x 30 in / 50.8 x 76.2 cm Provenance
Ferrers Gallery, London The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, USA, 1964 Richard Green, London, 2002 Private collection, USA, 2002 Richard Green, London Exhibited
London, Ferrers Gallery, Grimshaw, 1964, no. 18 New York, Wildenstein, From Realism to Symbolism: Whistler and his world, 4th March-3rd April 1971, then Philadelphia Museum of Art, 15th April-23rd May 1971, no. 74
Richard Green Gallery, for sale bridge. The restricted headroom beneath the crossing prevented the passage of tall ships, necessitating their anchorage and unloading of cargo within easy reach of the wharves and warehouses along the riverside. Immediately to the right of the bridge on the north bank, Fresh Wharf, Cox & Hammond’s Quay were located, the principal wharves for the unloading of fish from medieval times, followed by Nicholson’s and Botolph wharf (destroyed in the Blitz) before Billingsgate Fishmarket and the Custom House, which are just out of view.
The Old London Bridge of the nursery rhyme was a medieval structure covered with dwellings, much like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence which survives to this day. The bridge portrayed in Grimshaw’s painting was a new bridge composed of five stone arches built between 1823 and 1831, completed by Sir John Rennie according to his father’s design. It was opened by King William IV and Queen Adelaide on 1st August 1831. This bridge was removed and re-erected at Lake Havasu City, Arizona in the 1960s. Unlike Grimshaw’s Reflections on the Thames: Westminster, 1880 (Leeds Art Gallery), in which he includes the busy Embankment with the suggestion of fallen women and their fate, London Bridge focusses solely on the river and the centrality of the work being done upon it. In the foreground, just above the artist’s signature, two Lightermen (so named from the process of ‘lightening’ the ship) lead a small convoy, straining to control their barge transporting cargo from the triple-masted ship just before the
To the left of the majestic ship’s masts, Grimshaw records the iconic London skyline; most importantly the dome and twin baroque towers of St Paul’s Cathedral, designed by Sir Christopher Wren and built between 1675 and 1710 after its predecessor was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. To the right it is also possible to discern the distinctive spire of Wren’s St Magnus the Martyr, built between 1671 and 1676. 80
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