Portrait painter Mason Chamberlin was born in the City of London and baptised in Bishopsgate in 1722. By 1737, year he was apprenticed to a freeman of the Salters’ Company, he was an orphan. Little is known of his artistic training, but he was reportedly a pupil of Francis Hayman. Chamberlin’s earliest signed work of 1754 or before is a small oil-on-copper portrait of novelist Samuel Richardson. He exhibited at the Society of Artists of from 1760 and, although best-known for his portraits, won the Society’s second premium of 50 guineas for a history painting in 1764. He was a founding member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768, exhibiting at the Academy from 1769 to 1786. He died in Holborn, London, in January 1787 at about the age of 65.
