CAMERON, Charles

English architect of Scottish descent, active in Russia. He was court architect in St. Petersburg from 1779 until his death.

Born in London, the son of a Scottish carpenter and builder who settled in London, Cameron trained under the architect Isaac Ware, who was an acknowledged expert on Italian Renaissance architecture and the style of Andrea Palladio, and who produced the key English translation of Palladio's Four Books of Architecture (I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura), complete with his own illustrative engravings. After Ware's death, Cameron continued his work for a new edition of Lord Burlington's Fabbriche Antiche, a treatise of ancient Roman art. He visited Rome in 1768, where he surveyed the Baths of Titus, as well as the remains of other public baths in the city. Returning from Italy in 1769, he published the results of his research in 1772 in a book entitled: "The Baths of the Romans", complete with detailed documentation in English and French.

Few details are known of his career between 1769 and his departure for St Petersburg in 1779, except that - through no fault of his own - he became embroiled in a financial scandal involving his father, who was jailed in Fleet Prison for debt.

In Russia, meanwhile, the classically-educated Empress Catherine II was becoming dissatisfied with being surrounded by BaroqueGLOSSARYThe period in art history from about 1600 to about 1750. In this sense the term covers a wide range of styles and artists. In painting and sculpture there were three main forms of Baroque: (1) sumptuous display, a style associated with the Catholic Counter Reformation and the absolutist courts of Europe (Bernini, Rubens); (2) dramatic realism (Caravaggio); and (3) everyday realism, a development seen in particular in Holland (Rembrandt, Vermeer). In architecture, there was an emphasis on expressiveness and grandeur, achieved through scale, the dramatic use of light and shadow, and increasingly elaborate decoration. In a more limited sense the term Baroque often refers to the first of these categories. The development of the Baroque reflects the period's religious tensions (Catholic versus Protestant); a new and more expansive world view based on science and exploration; and the growth of absolutist monarchies. architecture, and quickly perceived the "imperial" image potential of Neoclassical art. Through her European agent Baron Melchior Grimm, she recruited several Neoclassical designers and decorators including Cameron, who arrived in St Petersburg in 1779. Catherine took an instant liking to the Scot, being much impressed with his drawing skills as well as his knowledge of both Greek art and the monuments of ancient Rome.

Catherine II took a great interest in renovation and redesign of the royal residences on the outskirts of St. Petersburg at Tsarskoe Selo and Pavlovsk, for which she was able to secure the services of Cameron, her last court architect.

Cameron's career in Russia started with expansion of the Chinese Village in Tsarskoe Selo park. In 1780-84 he redecorated the formerly RococoGLOSSARYA style of design, painting, and architecture dominating the 18th century, often considered the last stage of the Baroque. Developing in the Paris townhouses of the French aristocracy at the turn of the 18th century, Rococo was elegant and ornately decorative, its mood lighthearted and witty. Louis XV furniture, richly decorated with organic forms, is a typical product. Leading exponents of the Rococo sryle included the French painters Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) and Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), and the German architect Johann Balthasar Neumann (1687-1753). Rococo gave way to Neo-classicism. halls of the main Catherine Palace built by Bartolomeo Rastrelli (1700-1771) in the 1750s; what started as a modest remodelling soon resulted in the most lavish interiors of the whole palace, reminiscent of Palladio, Raphael, Robert Adam and Clérisseau yet blending into Cameron's unmistakably own style.

In 1782 Cameron started his first standalone building in Tsarskoe Selo, the Cold Baths, a two-story bathhouse in mixed Italian-Greek classicism with luxurious interiors (notably the Agate PavilionGLOSSARYA lightly constructed, ornamental building, such as a garden summerhouse; a small, ornamental structure built onto a palace or cháteau; a prominent section of a monumental façade, projecting either centrally or at both ends.). In 1784-87 it was expanded with a two-story galleryGLOSSARYan upper story, similar to a tribune, running along the side of a building and open on one side to the interior; in a church (basilica) above the side aisles, over the ambulatory (central-plan building) and also over the west end. The gallery was used to keep certain groups of worshippers apart (women, noblemen). (Cameron's Gallery), mixing natural stone Roman ground floor with a lightweight, snow-white upper floor gallery marked with unusually wide spacing between columns. The gallery, adorned with statues of foreign poets and philosophers, became Catherine's favourite promenade for years. It was flanked with a formal garden on one side and an English landscape park on the other.

Pavlovsk, the largest landscape park in 18th century Russia, is attributed to a succession of architects, starting with Cameron and ending with Carlo Rossi. Cameron built the original palace core that survives to date, the Temple of Friendship, Private Gardens, Aviary, Apollo ColonnadeGLOSSARYRow of columns with a straight entablature and no arches. and the Lime Avenue and planned the original landscape.

Upon ascension to power in 1796, Paul fired Cameron from all his contracts. Alexander, who succeeded Paul in March 1801, appointed Cameron the chief architect of the Russian Admiralty. In 1805 Cameron finally retired.