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| Thomas Chambers |
| 1808-1866 |
| American Artist |
| Born in England, Thomas Chambers emigrated to America in 1832. He painted first in New York, and later in Boston and Albany. Along with other painters of the early 19th century who came from Europe to settle and work in America, chambers would make a major contribution to the early development of American marine art. Chambers, having little or no formal art education, painted his portraits, river landscapes, harbor views, battle scenes and open ocean marines in a generally naive style. Typical of his technique are bright flat colors, large generalized forms and sharp contrasts of dark and light patterns in the water and sky. Chambers left London for New Orleans in 1832 to pursue his painting career. He was in New York two years later and listed himself in city directories and newspaper advertisements as a marine, landscape, and "fancy" painter from 1834 to 1840. Over the next two decades, he worked in Baltimore, Boston, Albany and New York. While his prolific output suggests a strong base of patrons, Chambers lived on the fringe of academic art communities and did not exhibit with any official art organizations of his time. He did, however, sell his works at auction, as evidenced by a recently recovered Newport, R.I. auction list from 1845. Chambers disappeared from American city directories and census records after 1866; evidently, he returned to Whitby, penniless and disabled, as suggested by the newly-discovered record of his death in the city's poorhouse in 1869. |
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