(1723 - 96), architect, b. Gothenburg, e. s. of John Chambers, a Scottish merchant; Swedish EICo 1740 - 9, sailing to India and China; studied architecture under J.F. Blondel in Paris 1749; m. 1753 Catherine More; treas. RA 1768; Comptroller of the Office of Works 1769 - 83 and surv.gen. 1783; Kt (Sweden) 1770; FRS 1776.
1750 - 5 Rome (Nov. 1750 - 1752) [Paris summer - Nov. 1752] Florence (Dec. 1752 - Jan. 1753), Rome ( - 10 Feb. 1753 - Apr. 1755)
By the time he went to Italy in November 1750, William Chambers had already visited India and China as a cadet with the Swedish East India Company and he had also spent a year in Paris studying architecture under J.-F. Blondel.1 He was to spend nearly five years in Rome where he came to be regarded as a 'Prodigy for Genius, for Sense & good taste'. Robert Adam, for whom Chambers was a serious rival, particularly commented on his taste 'for Bas relieves, Ornaments, & decorations of Buildings, He both knows well & draws exquisitely. His Sense is middling, but his appearance is gentell & his person good which are most material circumstances'.2 Chambers associated with the French draughtsmen P?cheux and Cl?risseau (though he was alleged to have 'behaved disgracefully' to the latter3), both artists subsequently employed by Robert Adam.
Few details are known of Chambers in Italy, but he said he had visited 'Naples, Florence, Bologna, Venice, Vicenza, Genoa, Milan, Turin, &c, collecting in all those places all that could serve me and increase my knowledge [of] the science I had chosen for my study'. In the summer of 1752 he had returned to Paris and in November he left with Catherine More, his future wife, for Florence, where they had arrived by mid-December 1752. On 14 January 1753 Chambers was elected to the Florentine Accademia del Disegno, having been introduced by Ignazio Hugford.4 Horace Mann commended him to Cardinal Albani,5 and by 10 February Chambers and Catherine More were in Rome.6 They were married there on 24 March 1753, the witnesses being the Abb? Grant, George Potter and James Oughton. They lodged thereafter in the Strada Felice, in Tomati's house (where Piranesi had a shop).7 Their daughter Cornelia was born there on 5 July 1753 and a second daughter, Selina, late in 1754/early 1755. Chambers, his wife and older daughter, together with the sculptor Joseph Wilton, left Rome for England in April 1755, leaving their younger daughter in the care of Dr and Mrs James Irwin; after Irwin's death in February 1759, Mrs Irwin brought Selina back to England in May.8
In 1773 Chambers counselled his pupil Edward Stevens to study in Italy the works of 'M. Angelo, Vignola, Peruzzi, and Palladio' with those of 'the celebrated Bernini', and he urged contact with Piranesi, who 'is full of matter, extravagant 'tis true, often absurd, but from his overflowings you may gather much information'. He later advised the students at the RA that 'Travelling to an Artist is what the University is to a Man of Letters, the last stage of a regular Education'.
1. See DBA and J. Harris, Chambers, [1970], 1 - 8, 21 - 31. 2. Fleming, Adam, 160, 161. 3. Ibid., 138. 4. Wynne 1990, 537 (14 Jan. 1753). Salmon 1990, 201 - 2. 5. Lewis 1961, 172. 6. SP 105/310, f.19 (Albani, 10 Feb. 1753). 7. AVR SA, S.Andrea delle Fratte. 8. Hayward List, 10, 19. Dr Jas.Murray to Chambers, 7 Mar. 1759 (RA lib.).