Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. Cecil Gordon Lawson (1849-1882). 1870. Oil on Canvas. 24¼ x 38¼ inches (61.5 x 97.2 cm). Private collection. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
This was the first work that Lawson exhibited at the Royal Academy, shown in 1870, no. 998. In 1870 the Lawson family had moved to Chelsea to Carlton House at 15 Cheyne Walk. The Illustrated London News pointed out that: "For centuries – from the days of Henry VIII and before, down almost to within living memory, Chelsea was the favourite suburb of fashion, wit, pleasure, wealth and learning" (485). Cheyne Walk was named after the second Viscount Newhaven, created Lord Cheyne by William III. Chelsea at this time had many famous residents including the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti who lived next door to the Lawsons in Tudor House at 16 Cheyne Walk. The historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, the so-called "Sage of Chelsea," lived at 5 Cheyne Row. James McNeill Whistler lived nearby at 2 Lindsey Row, now 96 Cheyne Walk. Lawson's painting displays Cheyne Walk prior the Chelsea Embankment being constructed in 1874 and when the river still washed up to the roadway in front of the street.
Cecil had a small studio in the top room of Carlton House he shared with his brother Wilfrid. The scene of Cheyne Walk, Chelsea was likely painted from here. Esposito has noted that this work:
was a foretaste of the path his art was to take. Set near his family home, it depicted an autumnal scene with figures hurrying in the chilly air besides the Thames. A barge filled the middle distance and another was just glimpsed in the foreground near the riverbank. The composition was unusual for its cropped motifs and unusually adopted viewpoint, likely taken from an upstairs window – perhaps his own - and lacked an overall central focal point that the prevailing modern dictum of contemporary art demanded. [115]
In front of the tall tree to the left of the composition can be seen the distinctive form of Thomas Carlyle, easily recognizable from James Whistler's famous portrait of him, Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. II of 1872-73. Lawson's painting, however, is far less abstract than Whistler's similar river views from Chelsea looking towards Battersea painted at this time period.
Cheyne Walk, Chelsea was not widely reviewed when shown at the Royal Academy, probably at least partly because Lawson was a young unknown artist in 1870. The Illustrated London News when discussing the area of Cheyne Walk merely stated: "There is, by-the-way, a view from the walk by Mr. C. G. Lawson, one of the artist-residents, now in the Academy exhibition (998)" (485). Later when it was shown in the posthumous exhibition of Lawson's work at the Winter Exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1882-83 a critic for The Spectator praised the painting's colour: "The effect on a given landscape of twilight, or mist, or rain, or warm sunshine, has hardly ever been given more beautifully than in many of his pictures of which we speak. The light of the silvery sky and its reflection in the river, in the Cheyne Walk (1870), is a marvel of delicate beauty, and every little fleck of colour on the figures or in the falling leaves, is inserted with exquisite taste and rightness. And in all his pictures which record his impressions, his colouring is never coarse, but gently suggestive of beauty and nature" (51).
Bibliography
"Art. The Grosvenor Gallery. – Mr. Cecil Lawson." The Spectator LVI (13 January 1883): 50-51.
Esposito, Donato. Frederick Walker and the Idyllists. London: Lund Humphries, 2017. Chapter 5, 112-135.
Owen, Heseltine. "In Memoriam: Cecil Gordon Lawson." The Magazine of Art XVII (1894: 1-6, 64-70.
"The Late Mr. Maclise's House in Cheyne-Walk." The Illustrated London News (7 May 1870): 485.
Created 12 June 2023