The periods in which each new or refined form of artificial lighting have become dominant have presented their illumination as characteristic of the highest state of progress, as a significant stage of development that has lifted humanity out of a state of nature. Meanwhile, the everyday use of lighting has been complex, driven by practicality, expediency and materiality, not linear ‘progress’. This paper explores these uses, the reception and meanings attaching to artificial illumination during the nineteenth century, through the lens of Atkinson Grimshaw’s Reflections on the Thames (1880). In this painting, situated within a long history of nocturnes and landscapes, we also see an heterogenous interplay of reflected artificial (gas, oil, electric arc) light, each consumed simultaneously within metropolitan culture, itself seen as the apogee of civilisation for the time, all cut through by the tidal river Thames and (natural) moon light. In this painting, we see how a Victorian genre artist, reflecting on the Thames, created a narrative of London as an unsleeping, working Capital, framed by nature, dependent on its forces, illuminated, yet shady, multifaceted, effortful.