One of the last works of Trevor Grimshaw is a book of black-and-white photographs entitled Stilled Life [1], the subject being the redundant steam locomotives that were stored at Woodham’s Scrapyard in Barry, South Wales (an image in colour taken by Peter Brabham is shown below). For all of us that have happy memories of these splendid machines in action, the scrapyard is a place of melancholy, even though delays in cutting up meant that some locomotives were bought from Dai Woodham and several have subsequently been re-built and returned to working order.
Shortly after the photographs were taken, Trevor Grimshaw died, aged 54, following a fire at his home, something which adds poignancy to his story. In addition to his work as a photographer, Grimshaw was an accomplished artist, creating monochrome images of northern landscapes, two of which (from the Tate Gallery [3]) are illustrated below. Most viewers of these monochrome works associate them with the paintings of L.S.Lowry (who owned three of them [2]), but I think they consciously, or subconsciously, show the influence of Caspar David Friedrich. To emphasise this point, I have converted two of Friedrich’s paintings to greyscale to allow direct comparison.
The first is Abbey in the Oak Wood (below, upper) that was exhibited in the Berlin Academy of Art in 1810 (as one of a pair – the other was Monk by the Sea [4]) in which we see the ruins of an abbey surrounded by trees that may be dead, or maybe had lost all their leaves, as this is a winter scene. In the foreground are monks who are walking towards the ruin. The whole effect is arresting and gloomy, but what does it mean to the viewer? As with all pictures, we can know something of the artist’s intentions, but we also use our own projections. We know that Friedrich was a Protestant [4] and that this picture shows a Catholic ruin and desolation. He was also fascinated by nature and landscape and this is one of Friedrich’s paintings that, to use his phrase, “is to be seen and recognised only in belief” [4]. As Michael Prodger [5] writes in The Spectator: “His Christianity is not insistent but comes wrapped in another - more widely practiced - religion: Nature. He offers the consolations and beauties of both.”
The second painting of Friedrich that I have chosen - Cross by the Baltic Sea (1815) (above, lower) - uses a feature that occurred many times in his work – the appearance of a solitary cross in a landscape. This symbol of Christ, and the redemption of His crucifixion, is placed in locations quite unlike Calvary and, in this painting, is on an outcrop by the sea, with an anchor near its base. Just as in Abbey in the Oak Wood, there is a feeling of slightly threatening mystery and, at the same time, a sense of spiritual hope.
Now let’s look at the two monochrome works by Trevor Grimshaw. In Open Space (1974) (the upper of the Tate images above), a solitary, bare tree is in the foreground, while the foggy background features a church tower and factories, with one chimney belching out smoke that is being carried away on the wind. We recognise that the tree, like those painted by Friedrich, shows desolation and, perhaps, death by pollution from the industry that replaced the natural world. The presence of the church is more difficult to interpret – did it represent something from Grimshaw’s spiritual beliefs, or was it used to indicate something that was longer-lasting, and more valuable, than the factories?
In Northern Townscape (1974) (the lower of the Tate images above), we see another church tower, with factories and several chimneys, one of which is producing dark smoke that suffuses the upper part of the image, while steam is rising from elsewhere in the factory complex. The impression gained is very similar to that in Open Space, but the foreground is dominated by two poles, one of which is clearly a telegraph pole. Both stand isolated, and are connected to nothing – there are no wires – so we gain a sense of isolation and of disconnection to the rest of the scene. Unlike Friedrich’s crosses, however, there seems little hope here and my impression is that Grimshaw did not enjoy the industrial landscapes that he reproduced, despite their attractiveness as structures [5], just as he did not like the rusting steam locomotives he photographed in the scrapyard at Barry.
Of course, I could be very wrong in drawing parallels between Friedrich and Grimshaw, and in interpreting their images in the way that I have done. That I react strongly to their work is an indication of the power of both artists to stimulate both the imagination and the emotions of the viewer.
[1] https://trevorgrimshawphotography.art/about/
[3] https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/trevor-grimshaw-1220
[4] Johannes Grave (2017) Caspar David Friedrich. Munich, Prestel Verlag.
[5] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/an-artist-for-our-times
