Turner's Last Home at 119 Cheyne Walk
Why is it significant?
Find the narrow little house with a balcony on the roof, squeezed into the terrace near the end of Cheyne Walk, looking across the water to Battersea. It is one of the smallest houses on the street. And yet one of the greatest painters who ever lived chose it as his hiding place.
Key Facts
| Place | Turner's Last Home at 119 Cheyne Walk |
|---|---|
| Address | 119 Cheyne Walk, London SW10 0ES, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.48100, -0.17720 |
| Part of Walk | Pensioners, Poets and Punks: Chelsea's Riverside History from the Royal Hospital to the King's Road, London |
| Generated | Generated |
Find the narrow little house with a balcony on the roof, squeezed into the terrace near the end of Cheyne Walk, looking across the water to Battersea. It is one of the smallest houses on the street. And yet one of the greatest painters who ever lived chose it as his hiding place.
In the 1840s Joseph Mallord William Turner was the most famous artist in England, rich, celebrated and quite exhausted by it. So he slipped away from his grand house and gallery in central London and moved in here, secretly, with his companion, a widow called Sophia Booth. To the neighbours he was simply Mr Booth, a retired sea captain perhaps, and the local boys nicknamed him Admiral Booth. Almost nobody knew that the stout, shabby old man in the riverside cottage was Turner.
He had a railed platform built on the roof, so that he could climb up at dawn and dusk to watch the light on the Thames. This bend of the river faces west, and the sunsets over Battersea and Wandsworth can be extraordinary, orange and violet spread across the water. For a painter who spent his life chasing light, steam and storm, it was the perfect last studio.
Turner died in this house on 19 December 1851. It is said that his last words were that the sun is God, though, like many famous last words, they come to us second-hand. He was buried in St Paul's Cathedral, and he left hundreds of paintings and thousands of drawings to the nation.
Stand by the river wall for a moment and look at the light yourself, whatever the weather. Turner would have found something in it. Then turn your back on the river and head inland, north, to the bend of the King's Road at the far end of Chelsea known as World's End.