The name ‘Walter Greaves’ is now familiar only to the residents of Chelsea, London where a blue plaque with his name can be found on 104 Cheyne Walk and refers to him as an artist. His works can be found in the collection of Tate Galleries and National Galleries of Scotland though they are rarely exhibited and no retrospectives have been devoted to him.
Walter Greaves was born on 4th July 1846 in London and his life has always been in some way connected to important artistic figures. His father was a Chelsea boat builder who worked as J.M.W. Turner’s boatman and also ferried other important Chelsea residents, such as Thomas Carlyle. Walter and his brother Henry learned the profession in their father’s footsteps.
We don't know when Greaves started painting and whether he had any art training. In his letters he wrote that he painted his most famous work Hammersmith Bridge on Boat-race Day when he was sixteen before he knew James Whistler who would become the key figure in his life. The painting shows a dense crowd on Hammersmith Bridge watching the annual university boat race between Oxford and Cambridge. In the year it was painted, around 12,000 people gathered to watch the event, raising fears that the bridge might collapse. It remains unclear whether he actually painted the picture at the time as he was known to be unprecise in his recollections.
In 1863 Greaves and his brother met Whistler who just returned from his travels. They introduced him to the sights of the River Thames and became his studio assistants. In return, Whistler provided painting lessons and took them to live drawing classes. In his memories, Greaves wrote that he and Whistler lived in the same row of buildings and their families became close. According to him, Whistler used to say to Walter’s sister: ‘You are the pride of one end of the Row and I am the pride of the other’.
Greaves and his brother Henry apparently worshipped Whistler even going as far as imitating his stylish dress and manner causing much amusement to the locals. With Whistler’s tutelage Greaves attempted to modify his initial detailed technique (seen in the Hammersmith Bridge picture), though his treatment of boats remained the same. He even later said: ‘to Mr Whistler a boat is always a tone, to us it was always a boat’.
Greaves became increasingly close to Whistler and assisted him in decorating the renowned ‘Peacock Room’ for shipping magnate Frederick Leyland. It was regarded as one of Whistler’s greatest artistic achievements but he did not advertise Greaves’ participation nor encouraged his ambitions to exhibit.
Greaves primarily painted landscapes and boating scenes, but produced several portraits of his family members and acquaintances. The Green Dress is a portrait of one of his sisters in an unusual dress in the style of the Victorian revival of Elizabethan fashion.
As Whistler’s reputation and success grew, he began distancing himself from Greaves, eventually ceasing all communication and virtually abandoning his former student. Walter struggled for many years attempting to sell his work and finally experienced a resurgence of interest in 1911 following an exhibition of his work at the Goupil Galleries.
However, the exhibition ended disastrously for Greaves with some claiming that the works were actually by Whistler and have been just lightly retouched by Walter. The scandal completely destroyed his reputation and ruined him financially, forcing him to sell his treasured collection of Whistler memorabilia at auction the following year. Sadly, his acquittance with the great artist proved to be his downfall. It is unclear whether the works were by Whistler as the dispute was never settled. Walter Sickert took Greaves’ side.
In 1921 Augustus John, William Nicholson and William Rothenstein organised another exhibition of Greaves' work at the Grosvenor Gallery. At the same time he was elected an honorary member of the Chelsea Arts Club. Despite the support of his fellow artists, his name and career still fell into obscurity and he spent the last years of his life living as a Poor Brother of the London Charterhouse, dying of pneumonia on 23rd November 1930.
Greaves' name still remains in the shadow of Whistler’s and is rarely mentioned individually. He worked in his own way producing portraits, caricatures and paintings informed by his training as a boatmen and the experience he gained whilst working and studying with Whistler. He never truly adopted the style or techniques of his teacher making it impossible to qualify him as a follower of Whistler rendering him almost invisible to the world of art history.
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