CHAMBURY, James

1927 - 1994

James Chambery was born at Islington, London on 23 May 1927, son of Walter Chambury (1887-1955), a mattress maker, and his wife Mary Ann née Cooper (11 November 1888-1972), who married at Hackney, London in 1907, sometime after 1934 Walter and Mary separated and Mary Ann went on to marry at West Ham in 1950 Joseph Clark (born 25 September 1881). James spent much of his early years in London but at the outbreak of the Second World War, he and his 14-year-old brother Joseph, were evacuated to Woodbridge, Suffolk and in 1939, James was at a school in Woodbridge, living at 39 Deben Road, Woodbridge. He returned to London and leaving school at the age of 14 and, showing a keen interest in drawing, studied in the evenings over several years at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and the Sir John Cass College. He began his career as a commercial artist with an emphasis on magazine design and illustration. James married at Westminster, London in 1952, Josephine Lucia Petronzio (5 November 1925-2006) and they left London in 1967 for Billericay, Essex, and James devoted himself to full-time painting. In 1978, they moved to Hadleigh in Suffolk so that they could live in the countryside that gave him the inspiration for his painting. Primarily, a painter of land and seascapes, all his pictures demonstrate his interest with the light as it permeates the sky, land, and sea. His love of the land took him to the West Country, the Lake District, Scotland, the Netherlands, and the Sultanate of Oman. It is his East Anglian pictures for which he is best known, although his pastels of flower studies and his animal studies are also widely acknowledged. A frequent London exhibitor with the Royal Society of Marine Artists, the Pastel Society and the Royal Watercolour Society as well as several successful one man shows. His paintings are hung in private collections in Britain, North America, South Africa, New Zealand, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Oman. An eminent member of the East Anglian Group of Marine Artists and the Suffolk Art Society. In December 1982 he was a co-exhibitor at a successful exhibition held at the Hadleigh Gallery to celebrate ten years of the twinning of Hadleigh with the French town of Rousies, a painting of Hadleigh by Chambury was on show at Rousies. In December 1991, he held an exhibition in the Sultanate of Oman which resulted in the patronage of senior members of the Omani government which led to a commission for an unlimited number of paintings to be hung in Omani universities, hospitals, and government offices. James Chambury was still working on this commission at the time of his death at 33 George Street, Hadleigh, Suffolk on 27 April 1994, being survived by his wife, who died in Ipswich in 2006. [James Chambury-Colour Light and Shade' (2011).

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Works by This Artist