Grave - John Atkinson Grimshaw (6th September 1836 - 13th October 1893)

One of my favourite paintings is Boar Lane (which is in Leeds) by John Atkinson Grimshaw. Those glowing orange shop window almost invite me in as they look so cosy. He was a remarkable Victorian painter who is less widely appreciated than he should be and died poor. He was buried in cemetery in Leeds but the headstones were cleared to make a pretty field so nobody knows the exact spot. Here I am somewhere near his bones (there’s a plaque to confirm he’s nearby) - also his sea-front holiday home in Scarborough.

He was born and died in Leeds and in his day was the city’s favourite home-grown painter. Aged 14 he worked as a clerk for Great Northern Railway and painted at night. His religious parents didn’t approve of his paintings and tossed them on the fire. They were bitterly disappointed when - aged 25 - he resigned to dedicate himself to brushes and canvases (I doubt they were happy with his marrying his cousin Fanny.) Quickly he was exhibiting in Leeds and by his late twenties he was selling enough canvases to rent Knostrop Old Hall, a Jacobean mansion (since demolished and now the site of Cross Green Industrial Estate.)

He's known for painting atmospheric night-time scenes which often feature a bewitching moon. In search of new material he travelled to Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Scarborough, Whitby and London. He worked for private art patrons and only produced about 145 paintings. He wasn’t much of a draughtsman and critics condemned his use of a camera obscura to project scenes onto canvas (as used by Caravaggio and Vermeer.) He was an convincing painter of evening dusk and his nocturne canvases induce an instant sense of night-time. I've seen some of his paintings close up and there no evidence of brush strokes (not sure how he did it.) Nowadays an original painting will sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds.

By his mid-thirties his reputation had spread to London where he exhibited at the Royal Academy and for a time he had his own studio. Success was not replicated at home life. He and Fanny produced sixteen children but ten died in childhood. Nobody knows what happened in his mid-forties there a financial disaster of sorts and bailiffs circled his finances. He was forced to generate money through painting but the quality suffered. He managed to hold onto the family home Knostrop Old Hall but it was there he was suddenly taken ill in October 1893. Tuberculosis was diagnosed but not cured and he died aged 57.

Over the decades tastes in the art world changed and John's work was nearly forgotten. An original painting could be bought for a few pounds. However the nocturnal town and dock scenes emerged again and nowadays original paintings sell for £250,000 - £800,000.

Grave, Leeds : whatever’s left of his bones lie within a well-mown field within the Leeds University campus. It’s called St George's Field and you wouldn’t know this green oasis was once Leeds’s main cemetery (in the sixties the university got permission to clear the headstones to create a public space.) Walking across the flat grass you wouldn’t know 93,000 skeletons lie beneath it. I strolled around and found the plaque on a wall dedicated to John. How far from my shoes was John - 10 feet? 80 feet? As I strolled around I saw a few clumps of headstones had survived the cull but none of the inscriptions revealed a Grimshaw. I did a salute on left.

Holiday home, Scarborough : John’s rented cliff-top holiday home afforded magnificent views across the curling North bay. It's still there but is now a small hotel. He called it his “Castle by the Sea” and a wall plaque nods to the famous former resident. I've walked by the place many times and one windy day was admiring the view when a lonely old chap said I was okay to come in, have a cup of tea and see the view from his lounge window. His wife and died and I got the feeling he wasn't sure how to fill his days. The ginger biscuits were soft but my main memory of his home is a fluffy cover on the toilet seat.