The following biographical information has been provided by Keith Bell, great great nephew of the artist.

John Chambers. born 09/01/1852 - died 10/07/1928.

A landscape, seascape and portrait painter in oil, tempera and watercolour; etcher; illustrator, John Chambers was born in Wellington Street, South Shields, and was educated at the Union British School.

His father was a Tyne Sea Pilot, and on leaving school, John also joined the Pilot Service, but soon left and enrolled in the Government School of Design at Newcastle, under William Cosens Way, later studying in Paris in the ateliers of Professors Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre at the Acadamie Julian, before settling at North Shields, England as a professional artist.

He first began exhibiting his work by showing several examples at the South Shields Fine Art & Industrial Exhibition in 1877. He followed this by showing his painting, Parton Hall and Harbour, at the Central Exchange Art Gallery, Newcastle in 1878. He was subsequently an exhibitor at the Arts Association Exhibition, Newcastle in 1879,1881 and 1882 and the Gateshead Fine Art and Industrial Exhibition in 1883.

In the following year, he began an association with the exhibitions of the Newcastle Bewick Club, which lasted just over a decade, and in 1886 he sent his first of three works, The Deserted Mill, to the exhibitions of Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours. Chambers mainly exhibited on Tyneside for the remainder of his career. Exhibitions to which he regularly sent examples of his work included those of the art clubs of South Shields and Tynemouth, and from their inception in 1905 the Artists of the Northern Counties exhibitions at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle.

Most of his work was executed in watercolour and predominantly featured nautical and landscape subjects. His most important work, however, was in oil and pictured HMS Victoria, which was accidentally sunk off Tripoli during maneuvers in 1893. He had painted the vessel as it looked leaving the Tyne following its completion at Sir William Armstrong's Elswick Yard in 1888, and after its loss spent a year preparing a 9ft x 12ft canvas, which proved so successful an interpretation of the scene that it was widely exhibited and was also engraved.

He is reputed to have turned down an offer of £2,000 for the work, and it was still in his possession when he showed it at his studio exhibition in 1903. Chambers maintained a succession of studios at various locations in North Shields at which he held exhibitions of his work, and occasionally those of fellow artists. It was also featured in several local loan exhibitions. Although much of his reputation rested on his nautical and landscape paintings, he also etched subjects for sale locally and was an occasional illustrator of Tyneside publications. Among his less typical works were a number of portraits in watercolour, among these one of Henry Hetherington Emmerson now in the possession of the Laing Art Gallery.

His last known exhibition was at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne in 1926. He died at his home, 58, Borough Road, North Shields, on 10th July 1928.