Walter Greaves

This portraitback to top

William Rothenstein made two drawings of Greaves in 1915; one was offered as a gift to the NPG in 1944, the other (smaller and without the characteristic hat) is untraced.[1]

Walter and Henry Greaves were James McNeill Whistler’s studio assistants and pupils when they lived as neighbours in Lindsey Row, Chelsea, in the 1860s and 1870s. The friendship dried up when Whistler moved in 1878; thereafter he cut them, dismissing their work as mere plagiarism. The brothers continued to paint and hawk their Chelsea subjects and portraits, but gradually slipped into penniless obscurity. In 1911 the dealer William Marchant discovered a cache of their works and briefly rescued Walter by organizing an exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in Regent Street; a second exhibition was put on in 1922.[2]

Rothenstein was another of Marchant’s artists and he exhibited at the Goupil in 1910, 1918 and 1929. He was also one of the organizers of the dinner for Greaves at the Chelsea Arts Club in 1920. A cheque for £150 pounds was presented to the aged artist with contributions from Max Beerbohm, William Nicholson, Walter Sickert and Rothenstein, among others.[3] Rothenstein was one of the sponsors to recommend Greaves’s admission as a Poor Brother at the Charterhouse. Greaves always thought Rothenstein had been influential in getting his large picture Hammersmith Bridge on Boat-Race Day acquired for the Tate in 1922: ‘I do really feel honoured that one of my pictures should be bought for the nation’, he wrote, ‘and as you have always been so kindly disposed towards me and my work, I reckon that you have been very instrumental in bringing me forward before the public’.[4]

Carol Blackett-Ord

Footnotesback to top

1) Rothenstein 1926, pp.35–6, nos 307, 308.
2) Marchant ‘conceived it to be his business to see to it that as many living artists as possible who attained a certain standard of proficiency should be enabled to remain living. [… He] fought like a merry tiger to rehabilitate Walter Greaves and place him in the position of dignity and comfort that this country owed him’: W. Sickert, obituary of W.S. Marchant, The Times, 24 Sept. 1925. {Augustus John} was another admirer of Greaves: ‘He is a real artist-kid, with Chelsea in his brain. I shall never cease to appreciate his work – so unlike Whistler’s at bottom.’ Letter from A. John to John Quinn, 17 May 1912; quoted Holroyd 1996, p.661.
3) Pocock 1970, p.188.
4) Letter from W. Greaves to W. Rothenstein, 14 Mar. 1922; quoted Rothenstein 1931–2, vol.2, p.375.

Physical descriptionback to top

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

Provenanceback to top

Given by the artist, 1944.

Exhibitionsback to top

William Rothenstein Memorial Exhibition, Tate, London, 1950 (103).

View all known portraits for Walter Greaves