The Constitution and the Guerriere

Thomas Chambers

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Born in England, Chambers worked in the United States as a prolific marine, landscape, and “fancy” painter between 1832 and about 1866. In the 1930s and 1940s, with the discovery of the Museum’s signed painting, Chambers emerged as a folk original, embraced posthumously by modern art enthusiasts as the “American Rousseau.” Here, Chambers focused his attention on a well-known marine battle in the War of 1812 featuring the U.S.S. Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides. Basing his composition on an engraving by Cornelius Tiebout after a painting by Thomas Birch, he took certain liberties with his source, advancing the action and showing the British ship, H.M.S. Guerrière, with all its masts broken.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art