Our painting shows a lifeless female bullfinch, lying next to a bunch of yew berries. The flesh of its red berries is just about the only part of the yew tree that is not highly toxic, although the seeds inside it are very much lethal. The bullfinch in our painting may well have been unlucky in ingesting a deadly part of the berry [2].

The juxtaposition of the bird with the most likely culprit of its untimely demise, the temptingly red berries, gives the viewer a macabre feeling. Grimshaw has painted the twigs surrounding the little body with delicate care. Due to the realistic depiction of the scene, the artist leaves the viewer with no means of escaping the starkness of what we are seeing. It was the early development of this technique that allowed him to experiment further with atmosphere and mood in his later work [3].

When Grimshaw embarked on his career as an artist, the Pre-Raphaelite tradition of painting was very influential in England. It is therefore not surprising that his style and technique (including fine brushwork and close observation of minute detail) should have characterised his work. From the late 1860s onwards he painted interiors and the dimly lit street scenes that became his hallmark. Creating an eerily quiet atmosphere full of hidden dread, much in the vein of a ghost story by M.R. James, these works showed individuals walking up nocturnal streets and abandoned country lanes.

Today, the paintings of J.A. Grimshaw can be seen in all leading British Museums and his work is also avidly collected in the USA.

[1]. See Jane Sellars (ed), Atkinson Grimshaw. Painter of Moonlight, Harrogate 2011, pp. 3-5.

[2]. Bullfinches do occasionally eat berries of yew: see Ian Newton: "The diet and feeding habits of the bullfinch", in Bird Study, Vol.7, No.1, March 1960, p. 7(1). But they prefer other fruit buds such as Guelder Rose berries.

[3]. Alexander Robertson, Atkinson Grimshaw, London 1988, p. 22.