Obscure in his own lifetime, Thomas Chambers found fame in the twentieth century with the discovery of The “Constitution” and the “Guerriere,” a rare signed painting of his that unlocked the identity of the artist behind a singularly flamboyant group of mid-nineteenth-century American marine and landscape paintings. Chambers’s expressive style and bold decorative sensibility appealed to avant-garde taste, and he was hailed as a spunky native original, “America’s first modern.” Although almost nothing was known about his life, his work rapidly earned a place in the growing collections and anthologies of American folk art.