Here at the junction of Cremorne Road and Cheyne Walk is a small house that was once 6 Davis Place and on which in 1846 Mrs Booth, from Margate, took a twenty-one year lease and moved in with Mr Booth. However Mr Booth had another residence, a large house in Queen Anne Street, W 1. There Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) maintained his studio, here he maintained his privacy. When visiting Margate throughout some 20 years before this he had been lodging with the widowed Mrs Sophia Booth and she was diligent in her care of him to his death here at 10 a.m. on 19/12/1851.
During the five years he lived in Chelsea he was not executing many new paintings but spent more time working on existing ones. A painting that is likely to have been from this time is one that was included in an exhibition titled 'The Artist and the Thames' held in Somerset House, four miles downstream, before that part of the building was taken over by the Courtauld Gallery. This showed a typical Turner sunset seen from a point on the Chelsea embankment, which was then quite a new structure. Apparently, between the picture being accepted for the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition and its being varnished, the American artist Whistler, a near neighbour of Mr Booth, applied the cut out shape of a dog to its surface with its front paws on the parapet to get a better view of J.M.W's magnificent sunset. Turner accepted the addition and varnished over it. It was more frequent that Turner was making alterations to the works of other artists such as his neighbour, Daniel Maclise's 'The Sacrifice of Noah Before the Deluge'.
Mr Booth enjoyed being taken on the river, usually attended by Mrs Booth, and was often in the care of the boatman Charles Greaves whose sons Henry and Walter became particularly associated with Whistler. The river trips were frequently extended by a walk on the opposite bank to the 18th century riverside church in Battersea. Thea Holme in her book 'Chelsea' notes that the chair in which he used to sit there to admire the view of the sunsets was still in place. His health was seriously bad for much of his final year but he did manage to get about to some degree. He noted about the Crystal Palace for the great exhibition 'the vast Conservatory all looks confusion worse confounded'. The recent novel temporary construction at Greenwich has been somewhat similarly described.

O/S Co-ords:2652.7727
Source(s):

Chelsea