Footnotes

• We are grateful to Alexander Robertson for confirming the attribution to John Atkinson Grimshaw on the basis of photographs.
  
  Provenance
  Private collection, UK.
  
  Grimshaw's long association with Scarborough began in the mid-1870s, when the artist rented a house in the town - which he named 'Castle-by-the-sea' after the Henry Longfellow poem - and secured the patronage of Thomas Jarvis, a local brewer.¹ Scarborough was by then becoming a prosperous town, deriving an income from tourism as well as from fishing.
  
  Grimshaw's time in Scarborough was productive and successful; his house attracted famous visitors such as George du Maurier and Ellen Terry, and the harbour provided the backdrop for some of the artist's most accomplished and atmospheric nocturnes. The present lot shows the South Bay under moonlight, with the outline of St. Mary's chapel prominent in the skyline. Lights twinkle from the shoreline cottages, and from a boat moored in the open water. A solitary figure stands beside the harboured boats on the quayside, silhouetted beneath a glowing streetlamp.
  
  ¹Alexander Robertson, Atkinson Grimshaw, London, 1988, p. 62.