Walter Greaves

Walter Greaves, by Powys Evans, published 1928 -NPG 4394 - © estate of Powys Evans

© estate of Powys Evans

Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue Search

Walter Greaves

by Powys Evans
Pen and ink and china white on cream wove paper, published 1928
14 in. x 10 in. (356 mm x 254 mm)
NPG 4394

Inscriptionback to top

Signed in ink lower right: ‘Powys Evans’;
inscr. in pencil bottom centre: ‘Walter Greaves’.

This portraitback to top

Made as part of a series for the monthly London Mercury, the drawing was published in March 1928.[1] Walter Greaves was not an obvious subject: now in his eighties, a pensioner at the London Charterhouse, he was a figure from the past. His works, however, epitomized turn-of-the-century riverside London, and he was still held in affectionate regard by a number of younger artists. There is no recorded connection between Powys Evans and Greaves, but both were Goupil Gallery exhibitors and enjoyed the support of disparate, influential figures including Max Beerbohm and Walter Sickert.

Powys Arthur Lenthall Evans produced whole-page portraits for the London Mercury for nine years in the 1920s and 1930s. At the same time he drew stylized, barbed cartoons for the Saturday Review under the name of ‘Quiz’. In the 1930s he left London and lived as a semi-recluse in Dolgellau, Wales, returning in 1975 to attend a retrospective show at the Langton Gallery. NPG 4394 was one of a set of drawings (for the periodicals Everyman and London Mercury) purchased by the Gallery in 1964 from Sanders of Oxford.[2] In response to news of this purchase Evans wrote, ‘I am delighted & feel honoured that the Gallery has bought 10 of my drawings’.[3]

In 1983 fifty-three sketch books and a number of loose drawings were presented to the NPG Archive by Evans’s nephew. Most have been indexed but it is possible that there are unrecognized sketches of Greaves (and other notable sitters) still lying among the hundreds of drawings.[4]

Carol Blackett-Ord

Footnotesback to top

1) London Mercury, vol.17, no.101, Mar. 1928, p.509.
2) The managing director of Sander’s, Kyril Bonfiglioli, was a friend of Evans’s. The drawing was bought for 15 guineas ‘before museum discount’. It is not reproduced in Evans 1928.
3) Letter from P. Evans to M. Sloan (NPG curatorial assistant), 17 Dec. 1964, NPG RP 4394–4403.
4) See Rankalawon 1989.

Physical descriptionback to top

Head-and-shoulders, three-quarters to left, wearing black hat.

Provenanceback to top

?The artist; purchased from Sanders of Oxford Ltd, 1964.

Exhibitionsback to top

Portrait Drawings by Powys Evans, Sanders of Oxford Ltd, 1964 (no cat.).

Recent Acquisitions, NPG, London, 1964.

Reproductionsback to top

London Mercury, vol.17, no.101, March 1928, p.509.

View all known portraits for Walter Greaves