Charles Cameron

Statut : architect

1745-1812

Notes : The son of a master carpenter and speculative builder, Cameron was apprenticed to the Carpenter's Company in 1760. His excellent draughtsmanship soon brought him to the attention of the architect Isaac Ware. After Ware's death in 1766, Cameron took on his project for a new edition of Lord Burlington's Fabbriche antiche (c.1732), a book of engravings from the drawings of Palladio, mostly of Roman baths. He travelled to Rome, where he obtained permission from the Vatican to excavate the baths of Titus. On returning to England in 1769 he published his book under the title 'The baths of the Romans explained and illustrated, with the restorations of Palladio corrected and improved', with English and French texts, in 1772; further editions followed in 1774 and 1775. But he was soon faced with grave financial difficulties and left England for St. Petersburg, where he arrived in 1778 in response to an invitation from Catherine the Great to design and build a Roman bath. Cameron spent the rest of his life in St. Petersburg working as the private architect of the imperial family. He was a leading figure in the neo-classical architectural movement in Russia.

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