George Chambers (painter)
Encyclopedia
Life and work
Chambers was born in a poor working-class area of WhitbyWhitby
Whitby is a seaside town, port and civil parish in the Scarborough borough of North Yorkshire, England. Situated on the east coast of Yorkshire at the mouth of the River Esk, Whitby has a combined maritime, mineral and tourist heritage, and is home to the ruins of Whitby Abbey where Caedmon, the...
, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
, the second son of a seaman; his mother took in lodgers. At the age of 8 years, he was working on the coal sloop
Sloop
A sloop is a sail boat with a fore-and-aft rig and a single mast farther forward than the mast of a cutter....
s in the town harbour. At the age of 10, he served as a cabin boy
Cabin boy
A Cabin boy or ship's boy is a boy who waits on the officers and passengers of a ship, especially running errands for the captain....
on a coasting vessel, and was afterwards apprenticed to the master of a Brig
Brig
A brig is a sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts. During the Age of Sail, brigs were seen as fast and manoeuvrable and were used as both naval warships and merchant vessels. They were especially popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries...
trading in the Mediterranean and Baltic
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
. He proved to have an innate talent for art, and so impressed the captain of the ship with his drawings of various sea-vessels, that he released him from his apprenticeship so that he could devote himself full-time to painting. Returning to Whitby, he took up employment as a house painter and took lessons in drawing in his spare time.
Chambers worked his way on a trading vessel to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1825, where he was greatly helped by Christopher Crawford, formerly of Whitby, but then landlord of the Waterman’s Arms at Wapping
Wapping
Wapping is a place in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets which forms part of the Docklands to the east of the City of London. It is situated between the north bank of the River Thames and the ancient thoroughfare simply called The Highway...
. His work, hanging in the gentlemen’s parlour of the inn, proved popular with its nautical clientele and won Chambers his early commissions, although he also worked as a scene-painter (1827–28) on Thomas Hornor
Thomas Hornor (artistic surveyor)
Thomas Hornor was an English land surveyor, artist, and inventor.Born on 12 June 1785 into the Quaker family of a grocer in Hull, Hornor learned surveying and engineering from his brother-in-law. Soon after 1800 he surveyed the Free Grammar School in Manchester, and was settled in London by 1807...
’s Panorama of London at the London Colosseum
London Colosseum
The London Colosseum was a building to the east of Regent's Park, London. It was built in 1827 to exhibit Thomas Hornor's "Panoramic view of London", the largest painting ever created.The design of the Colosseum was inspired by the Pantheon in Rome...
in Regent's Park
Regent's Park
Regent's Park is one of the Royal Parks of London. It is in the north-western part of central London, partly in the City of Westminster and partly in the London Borough of Camden...
, and at the Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel
Whitechapel
Whitechapel is a built-up inner city district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, England. It is located east of Charing Cross and roughly bounded by the Bishopsgate thoroughfare on the west, Fashion Street on the north, Brady Street and Cavell Street on the east and The Highway on the...
(1830–31). In 1829, two of his pictures were purchased by Admiral Thomas Capel
Thomas Bladen Capel
Admiral Sir Thomas Bladen Capel GCB RN was an officer in the British Royal Navy whose distinguished service in the French Revolutionary War, the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812 earned him rapid promotion and great acclaim both in and out of the Navy...
who drew his merits to the attention of other officers including Admiral Lord Mark Kerr. The latter in turn secured him the patronage of King William IV
William IV of the United Kingdom
William IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death...
and Queen Adelaide
Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen
Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen was the queen consort of the United Kingdom and of Hanover as spouse of William IV of the United Kingdom. Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia, is named after her.-Early life:Adelaide was born on 13 August 1792 at Meiningen, Thuringia, Germany...
in 1831–32 and thereafter Chambers was an established artist. He only showed three works at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
1828–29 and 1838, but many more at the British Institution
British Institution
The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery...
, 1827–40, the Society of British Artists 1829–38 and the Old Water-colour Society
Royal Watercolour Society
The Royal Watercolour Society is an English institution of painters working in watercolours...
, 1834–40, of which he was elected member in 1834.
Chambers was a talented draughtsman and watercolourist and an accomplished painter in oils
Oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...
, often working with fluent, colourful bravura in such views as A Fresh Breeze off Cowes and A Dutch Boier in a Fresh Breeze (National Maritime Museum
National Maritime Museum
The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England is the leading maritime museum of the United Kingdom and may be the largest museum of its kind in the world. The historic buildings forming part of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, it also incorporates the Royal Observatory, Greenwich,...
, Greenwich
Greenwich
Greenwich is a district of south London, England, located in the London Borough of Greenwich.Greenwich is best known for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time...
), the latter a product of his one substantial artistic tour to Holland in 1837. His most important later ‘set-piece’ commission was Bombardment of Algiers, 1816 by Lord Exmouth
Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth
Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, GCB was a British naval officer. He fought during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary, and the Napoleonic Wars...
, commissioned by the admiral’s friends for the Naval Gallery at Greenwich Hospital in 1836 (and now in the National Maritime Museum) probably through the agency of E.H Locker of the Hospital, Exmouth’s former secretary. He also painted two other pictures for the Gallery.
Chambers’ career was hampered by personal diffidence in promoting himself and, when he began to succeed, cut short by chronic ill health. A voyage to Madeira
Madeira
Madeira is a Portuguese archipelago that lies between and , just under 400 km north of Tenerife, Canary Islands, in the north Atlantic Ocean and an outermost region of the European Union...
in the summer of 1840 failed to bring improvements and he died of heart failure at Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
on 29 October 1840.
His son, also George Chambers (1829 – after 1870) was a marine and landscape painter.
Further reading
- John Watkins. Memoir of Chambers, the Marine Artist (1837).
- Obituary from The Art journal, Volumes 1-2 (Virtue and Co., 1839) pp. 186-7.
- Alan Russett, John Watkins. George Chambers, 1803-1840: his life and work : the sailor's eye and the artist's hand (Antique Collectors' Club, 1996).