Active as both painter and etcher, Rimington specialised in landscapes and townscapes, travelling widely in search of subjects. Having studied in London and Paris, he began to exhibit at the R.A. in 1880, and the twenty-five pictures he showed there up to 1902 included views in Devon, Ireland, Germany, Austria, north Italy and Spain. During his early career he seems to have been based in both Weston-super-Mare and Lincoln's Inn Fields. In 1886 he sent to the R.A. from an address in southern Austria, and by 1889, like so many artists of the time from Lord Leighton downwards, he had settled in Kensington.