Grimshaw as born in Leeds and began painting while still working as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway.
In the 1880s he moved to London and took a studio in Chelsea. He is best known for his detailed renderings of towns and dockyards by night and the present picture, a sophisticated essay in the late Victorian classical style is unusual. It was an appropriate purchase for Bradford, not only because Grimshaw was a Yorkshireman, but because the collection already had a number of works in the same taste by other artists.