![View from Don Saltero's in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, temp. 1770 [Don Saltero's Walk]](5.jpg)
View from Don Saltero's in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, temp. 1770 [Don Saltero's Walk], 1877. Oil on canvas. 20 x 24 inches (50.8 x 61 cm). The Burrell Collection, Glasgow, accession no. 35.298. Available from under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
A barber named James Salter founded Don Saltero's Coffee House at No. 18 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea in 1695. This coffee house differed from similar establishments at the time because it contained many cabinets of curiosities that had been donated by the prominent physician and collector, Sir Hans Sloane, as well as many other benefactors. Salter had previously been Sloane's travelling servant. Salter's tavern and museum was frequented by all the literati of the day. Salter died in 1728 but the coffee house continued at the same location well into the 19th century.
This painting is a return to Lawson's paintings of views from Cheyne Walk near his home. It is a reconstruction of what such a scene might have looked like a century earlier in 1770. Gone is the industrialization seen across the river in Battersea in Victorian times, the view replaced by farm buildings and windmills. The foreground is reminiscent of similar views by Lawson in works like his Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, but the clothing of the people strolling along the Thames are those of the eighteenth century. Numerous boats can be seen using the Thames as a means of transporting people and goods. As usual in such views by Lawson many trees can be seen along the walk by the river. The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1877, no. 396, and at his posthumous show at the Grosvenor Gallery, Winter Exhibition of 1882-83, no. 156.
The Architect thought the painting showed the influence of contemporary French landscape artists: "Mr. Cecil G Lawson exhibits only one of the landscapes we expected to see from his hands, View from Don Saltero's, Cheney Walk, temp 1770. It is painted in a dry manner, and with a touch caught from the French landscapists, and has certainly strength and freshness" (335). A critic for The Art Journal felt this work was a successful historical reconstruction of a view in old Chelsea: "Cecil G. Lawson's View from Don Saltero's, Cheney Walk, temp 1770 (396), is a most successful attempt at what might be called historic landscape. The aspect of the Thames at Chelsea a century ago required for its realization both fancy and research, as well as local familiarity with its riparian character to-day under various atmospheric influences. The picture throughout is carefully studied, under conditions true and yet original" (247).
Bibliography
"Painting at the Royal Academy. -II" The Architect XVII (May 26, 1877): 333-35.
"The Royal Academy Exhibition." The Art Journal New Series XVI (1877): 245-47.
Created 13 June 2023