Charles Cameron
b. London, mid-1740s;
d. St Petersburg I (Leningrad), 1811/12.

British architect, creator of integrated building and landscape compositions that brought English aesthetic ideas to the Imperial Russian court of Catherine the Great. He was apprenticed as a carpenter by his father, a builder, but in the early 1760s he was hired, on the basis of his drawing skills, by Isaac Ware to check Palladio’s Roman baths measurements for republication. This led to his own more interpretative study, Baths of the Romans (published in London 1772) and thence to an invitation to Russia in 1779 when Catherine the Great sought expertise for creating a Roman-style baths complex at Tsarskoe Selo Palace. He was chief architect to Catherine at Tsarskoe Selo, and to her heir Paul at nearby Pavlovsk, till the former’s death in 1796, when he was dismissed by Paul. In 1803 he was re-employed into imperial service by Alexander I as chief architect to the admiralty, but he was dismissed in 1805 in favour of Zakharov. At Tsarskoe Selo Palace Cameron created a series of superb interiors with ADAMesque Classicism, chinoiserie etc. as well as pavilions and promenades forming a stage-set for Catherine’s new Enlightenment ideas. With elements from William Kent and other British designers, Catherine’s park became an allegory of her foreign policy, and Sofia model town demonstrated a new Neo-Palladian urbanism for Russia. At Pavlovsk Cameron introduced the English Palladian villa and park, widely replicated later throughout Russia.

List of major buildings / works:
Tsarskoe Selo (now Pushkin): Baths and Agate Pavilion, 1780-85.
Cameron Gallery, 1783-6.
Private apartments and reception rooms, 1780-87.
Sofia model town, 1780-85.
Pavlovsk: Palace and park, 1781-7.
St Andrew’s Cathedral, Kronstadt, 1804 (redesigned by Zakharov).
Oramenbaum Naval Hospital, 1804-5.

Bibliography:
T. Talbot-Rice in Charles Cameron (exhibition catalogue), Edinburgh and London, 1967, pp.7-24. I. Rae, Charles Cameron, London, 1971.
D. Shvidkovsky, England in Russia: British Architects Build /or the Tsars, London, 1991.