Chester Harding (December 31, 1866 – November 11, 1936) was an American civil engineer who managed the construction of Gatun locks (1907-1913) and later was Governor of the Panama Canal Zone from 1917 to 1921.

[3] His early education had been supplemented by training from his father at home; Chester Harding completed the requirements for a bachelor's degree in Engineering from the University of Alabama in 1884 while only seventeen years old.

He took up portrait painting, which had been the profession of his grandfather Chester Harding, and received training at Boston and Paris from 1923 to 1927.

Harding painted portraits of the first four Canal Zone governors: George Washington Goethals, Jay Johnson Morrow, Meriwether Lewis Walker and a self-portrait of himself.

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