George Chalmers (artist)

Portrait of Alexander Macdonald, 1st Baron Macdonald, now at the National Gallery of Scotland.

Edward Cornwallis by Sir George Chalmers (1755)

Sir George Chalmers, Bart., a native of Edinburgh and a pupil of Allan Ramsay, exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy from 1776 to 1790.

Chalmers, born in Edinburgh, studied in London under Allan Ramsay, son of Allan Ramsay the poet, and later under masters in Italy. His family lost their estates owing to sympathy with the Jacobite cause. He practiced his profession as an artist first in Hull, and afterwards in London, with frequent travels to the Continent. In 1755 he painted at Minorca Edward Cornwallis and the distinguished General William Blakeney, then commanding at Minorca.^[1]

He died in London in 1791. He was buried in Old St. Pancras Churchyard on 15 November 1791 next to his wife Dame Isabella Chalmers who had died in 1784.^[2] His grave was lost and is not listed on the Burdett Coutts memorial within the churchyard to important graves lost.

References

This article incorporates text from the article "CHALMERS, George" in Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers by Michael Bryan, edited by Robert Edmund Graves and Sir Walter Armstrong, an 1886–1889 publication now in the public domain.