John Atkinson Grimshaw – Full Moon Behind Cirrus Cloud from the Roundhay Park Castle Battlements

“The consequence was, that when the moon, which was full and bright (for the night was fine), came in her course to that space in the sky opposite my casement, and looked in at me through the unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me. Awaking in the dead of night, I opened my eyes on her disk—silver- white and crystal clear. It was beautiful, but too solemn…”

(Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre)

John Atkinson Grimshaw, Full Moon Behind Cirrus Cloud from the Roundhay Park Castle Battlements, 1872

Another painting by John Atkinson Grimshaw, another “nocturne”, another full moon, though this time is it hidden, as the title suggests, behind cirrus clouds. The painting shows a view from the Roundhay Park Castle’s battlements, so romantically overgrown with ivy, and the view is intensely dreamy and romantic as well; up in the sky the full moon hidden briefly by the clouds but its potent silvery shine is visible despite the cloudy veil, then in the distance a river flowing slowly under the watchful eye of the moon, lined with trees, and more meadows and woods sprawling under the majestic castle. Setting: a castle. Time of the day: night. Moon: full. A perfect combination for a romantic painting! Grimshaw knew that as well, but he never verges on sentimentality. Instead, his paintings are always tinged in mystery and subtlety. He doesn’t play with cliches or add pictorial elements for the sake of a good or a sublime painting. His paintings are visual translations of the pure poetic experiences and are in this way close to the paintings of the German Romanticist Caspar David Friedrich.

The painting made me think of a scene from Jane Eyre, from chapter twenty, when Jane is awoken at night by the sheer intensity of the light of the full moon and then suddenly hear the scream:

“I had forgotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also to let down my window-blind. The consequence was, that when the moon, which was full and bright (for the night was fine), came in her course to that space in the sky opposite my casement, and looked in at me through the unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me. Awaking in the dead of night, I opened my eyes on her disk—silver- white and crystal clear. It was beautiful, but too solemn; I half rose, and stretched my arm to draw the curtain.Good God! What a cry! The night—its silence—its rest, was rent in twain by a savage, a sharp, a shrilly sound that ran from end to end of Thornfield Hall. My pulse stopped: my heart stood still; my stretched arm was paralysed. The cry died, and was not renewed…”

Charlotte Bronte uses the poetic, romantic motif of the moon in a clever way, first to set a dreamy tone and then the scream is intriguing, almost as if it were a scene in a Gothic novel. In Grimshaw the full moon is hidden by clouds, while in the novel the full moon is crystal clear, but still I think that the night sky in Grimshaw’s painting is still clear and that the moon would have been seen perfectly well and that the clouds were just a momentary distraction.