Old Cheyne Walk

Old Cheyne Walk. Prospect Place, corner of Lawrence Street & Cheyne Walk. The pavements are paved but the road not. Shop premises include W Hey, Cowkeeper; Thames Coffee House, coffee - dining rooms; and a public house. Advertisements are displayed for Bell's Life in London - 6d weekly; Royal Cremorne Gardens - open every evening; The Oxford, 6 Oxford Street - redecorated and ventilated for teh summer season - open every evening; The London Journal - largest cheapest and best publication - one penny; and Royal Humane Society DRACS [sic] in constant . . . On the reverse is painted boldly: "Water Colour View 'Old Cheyne Walk' Chelsea by H & W Greaves, Albert Lodge, 525 Fulham Road, Walham Green. Pupils of Whistler. The Private House on the Left of this Picture is where Holman Hunt, painted the 'Light of the World''. From their early teens, the self-taught brothers Walter and Henry Greaves produced hundreds of topographical drawings of their native streets. As seen here, these are characterized by their primitive style, by their intricate detail and by the insertion of stock figures into otherwise empty streets. The figure standing before Holman Hunt's house in Prospect Place may be one of the Greaves brothers in boatman's dress. Despite Greaves' intimacy with the Chelsea sites that he depicted, it is now believed that he was much reliant on the early photographs of fellow Chelsea resident James Hedderley (c. 1815-85). This is particularly true after 1874 when the building of the Embankment changed Chelsea's riverfront buildings. Greaves, however, nostalgically continued to paint Old Chelsea as if nothing had changed.