ARTFILE

In 2004 I was presented with a brief window of opportunity to enter a derelict three storey Georgian house and atelier in Steward Street, Spitalfields, London, prior to its imminent demolition. The building had once been occupied by the now largely forgotten Georgian portrait painter Mason Chamberlin. The plain wooden staircase had collapsed in on itself, so clambering cautiously up to the garret with its dusty weaver’s windows it was hard not to be struck by the absolutely destructive nature of historical change. Alone however in this melancholy space for a few moments my materialist self got the better of its philosophical counterpart as I impulsively wrenched off a 10 inch piece of decorative iron work from the grate of the lovely second floor fireplace as a souvenir of this impromptu visit; an exquisite Soanean fragment. So who was Mason Chamberlin? Mason Chamberlin the elder (1727-1787), alledgedly a pupil of Francis Hayman, was “a Presbyterian, and a devout man of retired habits”, a friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and one of the founders of the Royal Academy. Today his best known oil paintings are of Sir Benjamin Franklin (1762), which can be found in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a fascinating half-length picture of the surgeon Sir William Hunter (c.1781), notable for being the first to use arterial injection as a means of preserving cadavers, and shows him beside a bronze écorché figure. Incidentally this work was presented to the R.A. by Chamberlin in 1769, probably to mark the appointment of Hunter as Professor of Anatomy at the Academy. Grove's Dictionary of Art damns Chamberlin with faint praise, saying that “he was capable of producing a good likeness but his paintwork was very thin”. However the satirical poet Peter Pindar, real name John Wolcott (1738-1819) was less reticent in the 'Lyric Ode to the Royal Academicians' of 1782, predicting that his stiff figures will eventually be natural “When it shall so please the Lord/To make his people out of board”. Chamberlin's portrait of Franklin, commissioned by Colonel Philip Ludwell III, a rich Virginian living in London, is far from wooden though, and depicts the Promethean inventor in a stock pose, at ease in his study during an evening thunderstorm. Sat beside two bells designed to give a warning when the lightning rod of a house became electrified, the background view through the window is of a generic landscape with an exploding house and toppling steeple. Ever the businessman, these objects are in fact so-called "thunder houses", or "powder houses", toy models in Honduras mahogany made to demonstrating the efficacy of lightning rods, especially the pointed version developed by Franklin. This is the immortal Franklin of The Botanic Garden (1791), Erasmus Darwin’s poem which conflates his scientific and political achievements: “The patriot-flame with quick contagion ran/Hill lighted hill, and man electrised man.” Edward Fisher's 1763 mezzotint of this selfsame portrait was very popular with Franklin at the time, who distributed them to friends and colleagues as one way of cementing his position in the growing pantheon of 18th century science. The prints are inscribed at the base “Sold by Mr.Chamberlin in Stewart Street Old Artillery Ground, Spitalfields 5s”. This image was also copied by François-Nicolas Martinet in 1773 for a print that served as the frontispiece to a French edition of Franklin's writings. In effect the image, of a scholar in situ, has antecedents that stretch back to St.Jerome in his study (c.1390-1441) usually attributed to Jan van Eyck, though Chamberlin's painting also functions as a trade ad intended to sell Franklin's equipment, whilst evoking medieval emblems of apocalypse and the end of the world. The prosaic aspect is reinforced by Franklin's choice of dress, which as in the portrait of him by Scottish painter David Martin (1767) is quite sober and businesslike, still very much the inventor responsible for introducing the terms "battery" "charged" and "electric shock" into the language, rather than the influential politician he was to become. Only in the portrait by Charles Wilson Peale (1785) does he don a magnificent turquoise banyan, a kind of long-sleeved flowing robe often made of wool or heavy damask that connoted wealth and intellectual prowess, very much a symbol of the 'made man', a heroic polymath in the world of enlightenment scholarship. Today luxury 1 & 2 bedroom flats, and a Cali-Mex burrito bar occupy the former Chamberlin site, part of the relentless transformation around Liverpool Street Station, London.