James McNeill Whistler and Riverside Chelsea

0	LONDON: Meet outside Chelsea Old Church
P	Sunday 8th June, 2025
N	2:20pm

LONDON: Meet outside Chelsea Old Church

Sunday 8th June, 2025

2:20pm

Event information

Historian Antony Clayton will lead a walk around Thameside Chelsea focussing on one of the greatest artists of the Victorian London scene, James McNeill Whistler. We will see a number of the houses in which he lived and visit the remains of one of Victorian Chelsea’s great attractions, Cremorne Gardens, often painted by the artist.

Painter, printmaker, teacher, critic, polemicist, flamboyant dandy, acerbic wit, ebullient self-publicist, irascible litigant and a serious artist of considerable refinement, Whistler (1834-1903) was one of the most controversial figures in the London art world of the late-Victorian period.

Educated in the Parisian studio of Charles Gleyre and influenced by Japanese art and design, Whistler spent many of his most productive years in Chelsea, capturing crepuscular atmospheric effects on the Thames and producing some of his most memorable portraits.

His distinctive Nocturnes, Arrangements, Symphonies and Harmonies verged on abstraction and challenged the orthodox Victorian belief in the primacy of subject matter, so much so, that John Ruskin famously accused him of, “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”.

Many writers of the time, such as Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Swinburne and Oscar Wilde, were fascinated by his work, although he often fell out with friends and admirers.

Antony Clayton is the author of many books, including “Decadent London”, “Netherwood: Last Resort of Aleister Crowley”, and “Mansion of Gloom: the Unsettling Legacy of Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’“.

Venue information

LONDON: Meet outside Chelsea Old Church

0	Meet outside Chelsea Old Church 64 Cheyne Walk London SW3 5LT
`	The 170 bus passes outside. Sloane Square is nearest tube, but it's quite a long walk. Other buses go along the King's Road and you can walk south to the church from there.