Chelsea Reach: The brutal friendship of Whistler and Walter Greaves

By Tom Pocock

Chelsea was the artists’ quarter of London for a century.

In its climate, boys like Walter and Henry Greaves, apprentices in their father’s boatyard, began to draw and paint riverside scenes, primitive and untaught. Into its bohemianism, a refugee from 1860s upper-middle-class stuffiness, came Whistler – an astonishing new influence, whose pupil and friend Walter Greaves became. 

For years the friendship prospered; then came Whistler’s resentment, the rejection of Greaves, and the appearance of Oscar Wilde … Later, amazingly, came sudden fame for Walter Greaves, followed by denunciations and a scandal – caused by a muddle, or was it a plot? – about the origin of certain pictures. Who painted which? 

Chelsea Reach tells the fascinating tale of a friendship and bitter rivalry between artists – James McNeill Whistler and Walter Greaves.