Story

Who Invented the Nocturne?

In the 1870s James McNeill Whistler turned London's river at night into paintings he called nocturnes, after the piano pieces. A decade later a self-taught painter from Leeds took a studio a few streets from his in Chelsea and painted the night in the opposite way: sharp, lamplit and wet. One of them had to admit the other had got there too.

Sources: Wikipedia: John Atkinson GrimshawWikipedia: James McNeill WhistlerBritannica

Each of the 2 paintings in this story is a puzzle. Solve them to reveal the paintings and read how each one leads to the next.

Whistler lived in Chelsea beside the Thames and painted it after dark from memory, in paint so thin he laid the canvas flat to stop it running. He gave these pictures musical titles to say they were about colour and mood, not story.

Sources: WikipediaBritannica

Pro puzzle

Atkinson Grimshaw left a railway clerk's job in Leeds in 1861 to teach himself to paint. By the 1880s he was known for the docks and gaslit streets of Victorian port cities after dark, and kept a studio in Chelsea.

Sources: WikipediaGetty ULAN

Pro puzzle

The artists knew each other

Solve this puzzle and stop 1 to read how they connect.