(1743 - 1812), architect, s. of Walter Cameron, carpenter in London; apprenticed to his father 1760 and pupil of Isaac Ware c.1763 - 6; author of Baths of the Romans [1772]; architect to Catherine the Great and her son Gr. D. Paul of Russia, 1779 - 96, and to Tsar Alexander I 1802 - d.; d. St Petersburg.
1768 - 9? [London Mar. 1767] Rome (by 14 Sep. 1768), Pompeii [London Mar. 1770]
Inspired, no doubt, by the archaeological exploration which had led to publication of the first volume of Stuart and Revett's Antiquities of Athens in 1762 and by Adam's successful (though less than scientific) Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in 1764, Cameron set out for Rome with the specific intention of surveying the remains of the Imperial Roman Baths.1 His master Isaac Ware had intended to reissue the plates of Palladio's drawings of the baths. After the death of Ware in 1766, Cameron put out an advertisement for his forthcoming book and showed six proof prints at the Free Society of Artists in 1767.
By 1768 Cameron was in Rome. His route there is unknown, but evidence from The Baths of the Romans suggests he may have visited Bologna and Pisa. From the same source it can be deduced that he visited Nocera near Naples, and certainly he travelled to Pompeii, where he drew a plan and section of a laonicum (Soane Museum). His arrival at Rome was listed by Hayward in 1768,2 and there is a document of 14 September 1768 signed by Cameron in Rome;3 he was possibly the 'Mr Lacumien' sharing rooms in the Strada Felice in 1768 - 9 with James Nevay and David Allan.4
When Cameron's Baths was eventually published in 1772, it provided little more than a reissue of Burlington's Fabbriche, but three sheets of drawings from a set of more than thirty-one in the Soane Museum show that Cameron surveyed at least the Baths of Diocletian in far more detail than he was able to show in published form. On an overlay to plate 7 of his book, Cameron engraved a plan of what he took to be 'Subterraneous Vaults at the Baths of Titus', but which was actually part of Nero's Golden House below the Baths of Trajan - thus making him an unwitting but significant pioneer in the archaeology of the Golden House. Cameron stated both in his book and in a second advertisement for it (March 1770) that he had gained the personal permission of Pope Clement XIII (d. 2 February 1769) to make excavations in Rome. There is no further evidence of this, and the Roman document cited above shows that Cameron was refused permission to make very much less ambitious explorations beneath the church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. It also shows that Cameron knew and had the support of Thomas Jenkins in Rome.
1. See F. Salmon, Architectural History, 36 [1993], 69 - 93. 2. Hayward List, 13. 3. ASR ABA 3, f.133. 4. AVR SA, S.Andrea delle Fratte.
F. S.