Attributed to Thomas Chambers (1808-1869)

painted circa 1835; fully rigged sailing ship "ghosted" on the horizon; on what appears to be the original stretchers.



The scene, with figures in the foreground, and small sailboats on the river, is painted on a finely woven canvas, the back of the painting has fragments of a 19^{th century newspaper from Goshen, New York (Orange County) glued onto the backing.}

Descended in the family of the original owner to the present. A thorough genealogy of the family prepared by a professional genealogist and member of the original owner's family will accompany this lot.

Descended in the Seaman and Smith families of Smith's Clove, village of Monroe, Orange County, New York.  The Chambers painting hung in the Smith homestead from the time it was painted.  The Smith homestead is listed on the New York State and National Register of Historic Places. 

Samuel Seaman, born on 13 Oct 1754 in Hempstead, [Long Island], NY. Samuel died in The Clove, Orange County, NY. On 4 Mar 1778 when Samuel was 23, he married Keziah Titus, in Westbury Quaker Meeting, Long Island, NY. Keziah died in The Clove, Orange County, NY.  They had a child, Thomas (1779-1849) born on 16 Feb 1779. Thomas died in Cornwall, Orange Co, NY, on 9 Aug 1849; he was 70. Thomas married Sarah Brown. Sarah died in Cornwall, Orange Co, NY.

scattered, minor in-paint throughout; relined, restretched.
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Thomas Chambers (1809-1869)

New research suggests that Chambers was born in 1808 in Whitby, England, to a merchant sailor father and laundress mother.  He probably learned to paint from his older brother, George (1803-1842)--a self-taught artist who advanced from painting trunks and buckets to ship portraits, theatrical scenery, panoramas, and eventually "fine art" marine paintings for the King William IV and the Royal Academy.

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, RI 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.

Excerpted from Philadelphia Museum of Art press release, Thomas Chambers (1808-1869), American Marine and Landscape Painter, to be exhibited between February 8, 2009 and May 30, 2010.