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Highlights

Edgar Spier Cameron (American 1862 – 1944)

19th Century Fine Art Legacy

Edgar Spier Cameron was an artist who spanned the 19th and 20th centuries and had a keen insight to the art of that time. Chicago art critic C. J. Bulliet, said of him in 1935:

Cameron, despite his training under Cabanel and the other severe "academic" French masters, has not allowed either his talent or his inspiration to congeal. In his criticisms of the Columbian Exposition, he sought out the “progressives” of the show — Besnard and Israels. He has experimented in the "isms" as late as "Cubism," though he hasn’t exhibited his experiments. He has watched nature with not only a trained eye, but an understanding sympathy. – C. J. Bulliet, 1935.

Cameron was born in 1862 at Ottawa, Illinois, a nascent interest in art at an early age may have been what prompted his stepmother and a school teacher to encourage Cameron to further develop that interest; his teacher even going so far as to allow him the use of the school blackboard to further hone his skills. His “practical” father, however, got him a job in a local glass factory so as to discourage his pursuit of the arts. Eventually, though, Cameron and art prevailed and he took summer art instruction at the Chicago Academy of Design (now the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts) in 1881 and 1882.

With the money saved working at the glass factory, Cameron moved to New York City in 1882 and took instruction with plein air artist William Merit Chase and portraitist Thomas Wilmer Dewing at the Art Students League. Paris beckoned and in 1883, Cameron traveled there to take study at the Academie Julian and Academie Colarossi and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.[2] As an interesting aside: Bulliet mentioned, in his 1935 essay on Cameron, how the artist noticed, upon his arrival in France, the “marvelous sunsets,” so superior to the sunsets of Ottawa, New York, and Chicago. What he probably didn’t realize was that these spectacular sunsets were the result of, in May 1883 the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa, the debris of which was suspended in the atmosphere for a year creating the dramatic atmospheric effects.

Cameron returned to Chicago in 1890, although didn’t immediately embark on a career as an artist. Instead, he applied for the job as an art critic for the Chicago Tribune, using as his “credentials,” clippings of articles he had contributed to an Ottawa paper while he was living in Paris. So, he wrote instead of painting, reviewing local exhibitions. In 1892, while still working at the Tribune, Cameron, along with other artists, was hired to work on a cyclorama (large cylindrical mural) of the Chicago Fire for the World's Columbian Exposition held at Chicago in 1893. That experience led him to paint murals in addition to his easel painting. He became quite successful and many Mid-western banks, courthouses, theaters and public buildings benefitted from the addition of his artwork.

It was at the time of the Exposition that Bulliet says that the “Middle West became, for the first time, ‘art conscious.’” Bulliet recorded Cameron as saying of this phenomenon:

Before 1893, most people out here had an idea that "art" was something seven inches wide and 21 inches long, bound round with a frame and hung on the wall. His theory is that this conception arose out of the fact that the framed mottoes that were to be seen everywhere — "God Bless Our Home," "Home, Sweet Home" — were of those dimensions, and that when “pictures” came in, they had to conform.

Cameron’s observations on art and his experiences during the 1893 Exposition may have been turning point for Cameron, for in 1900, he decided to step down as artic critic at the Tribune to fully concentrate on painting. To further hone his skills, he made additional trips to France for additional study. The first was after the 1893 Exposition, from 1893 to 1896, another was a short trip in 1900 and a third from 1911-1913. His forte was to be landscapes and he painted many European scenes, in addition to his landscapes of Illinois and Michigan. He did not include in his oeuvre examples of the many “isms” that marked the first quarter of the 20th century in art.

Cameron was known for his historical scenes, some of finest were his group of twelve paintings depicting the history of Chicago, painted for the City of Chicago in 1911. Shortly before the World War I, a painting of sheep in the Michigan woodlands that Cameron had exhibited in Germany, received favorable reviews for its soft, atmospheric haze. Not due to a volcanic eruption this time, but from the haze from a nearby forest fire. Cameron did not limit his work solely to that of the mid-west. In the late 1910s, he spent some time at the recently formed art colonies in Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico. The artists were from all over the United States and were a mix of the “modernists” and the more traditionalist artists, a group which probably very much appealed to the former art critic.

In 1920, Cameron was awarded the “Palmes Academiques,” the highest art award of the French government for his work in the United States Department of Pictorial Publicity during World War I. More notable to remember, however, would be his many contributions to the art world through his many exhibitions. He exhibited frequently at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Municipal Art League of Chicago, the latter of which he was a founder. He also had exhibitions and sold his work at the one-time Chicago landmark department store Carson, Pirie, Scott& Co.

Chicago is known for many important events and people and artist Edgar Spier Cameron, and his influence within Chicago art circles, is someone who should be included among them.

Written by Joan Hawk, Researcher and Co-Owner Bedford Fine Art Gallery, September 6, 2025.

Use only with the permission of Bedford Fine Art Gallery.

References:

  1. Bulliet, C. J., 1935, Artists of Chicago, Past and Present, No. 30 Edgar Spier Cameron, in, Illinois Historical Art Project

  2. Greenhouse, Wendy, 2004, Chicago painting, 1895 to 1945: the Bridges collection, University of Illinois Press, Urbana; Illinois State Museum, ; Springfield.

  3. Ira Spanierman Gallery, 2002, The Friedman Collection: artists of Chicago, essay, March 7-April 6, 2002, Spanierman Gallery, New York, NY.

  4. Van Schaack, Eric, 2006, ‘The Division of Pictorial Publicity in World War I’, in Design Issues, Vol. 22, No. 1, The MIT Press.

  5. https://newspaperarchive.com/chicago-examiner-apr-09-1917-p-20/

  6. https://newspaperarchive.com/dixon-evening-telegraph-nov-06-1944-p-4/

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