Signed u.r.: W. Greaves

Pen and black ink and pencil heightened with white chalk, 22.8 by 15.5 cm

Provenance: Bought at J.S. Maas & Co, London, 1968; By descent to the present owner

Exhibited: London, J.S. Maas & Co., Christmas Exhibition, 1968, no.71

Walter Greaves appears in the foreground of one of Whistler’s first great views of the Thames Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge of 1863. This would mark the beginning of a close association between Greaves and Whistler in which the former (a Thames boatman with a yard on its banks) would take Whistler in his boat to view the river at different times of day and night. Greaves later became Whistler’s studio assistant, mixing his paints and, he would (perhaps apocryphally) claim, assisting on the painting of his canvases. Whistler would eventually ruthlessly drop Greaves, who died in penury in 1930. Greaves painted and drew Whistler on a number of occasions, sometimes at his easel, or against the Thames at night in the manner of one of his celebrated nocturnes. They are perhaps the most significant paintings and drawings of the American artist by a close associate in his direct circle.