To be held on Wednesday 18 March
The Life and Art of John Atkinson Grimshaw, tells the story of an artist from a modest background who lived a life that reflected and followed his vision for art. His grand mansions of Knostrop Hall and the Castle by the Sea, his beautiful and fragile consumptive muse brought into the family home, and his move to London to be in the shadow of Whistler reveal an extraordinary story worthy of a ‘sensation’ novel and gothic romance leaving us with an artistic vision that still charms today.
Mark Bills
Mark Bills MBE is a curator and art historian with over thirty years’ experience in museums and galleries. He has toured exhibitions internationally initiating the first exhibitions of Thomas Gainsborough in Holland, Germany, and Russia and taken Victorian art around the world. He has published widely on eighteenth and nineteenth century British art and was awarded an MBE in 2025 for his services to art. Mark, who is from Yorkshire, initially studied fine art at the Slade School before undertaking postgraduate research in art history at Manchester University. Mark was a curator at the Russell-Cotes, Senior Curator of Paintings, Prints and Drawings at the Museum of London and Curator at Watts Gallery, where he worked on the Hope capital project and subsequent development in rescuing G F Watts’ Studio at Limnerslease. He spent 10 years as the Director of Gainsborough’s House, where he initiated and led a major project to build a landmark new gallery for Gainsborough’s birthplace. He has a particular interest in Victorian art and as well as publishing on Atkinson Grimshaw he has just completed a monograph on another Yorkshire Victorian artist, William Powell Frith RA, due to be published next year.