George Chambers (painter)

At the age of 10, he served as a cabin boy on a coasting vessel, and was afterwards apprenticed to the master of a brig trading in the Mediterranean and Baltic.

He proved to have an innate talent for art, and so impressed local captains and crews with his decoration of their ships, that the ship-owner released him from his apprenticeship so that he could devote himself full-time to painting.

[2] Chambers worked his way on a trading vessel to London in 1825, where he was greatly helped by Christopher Crawford, formerly of Whitby, but then landlord of the Waterman's Arms at Wapping.

Chambers was a talented draughtsman and watercolourist and an accomplished painter in oils, 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, Greenwich), the latter a product of his one substantial artistic tour to the Netherlands in 1837.

Chambers’ career was hampered by personal diffidence in promoting himself and, when he began to succeed, cut short by chronic ill health.