With the first battalion of his regiment, of which he was at one time adjutant, young Chalmers served in Sicily in 1806–7, and when an order was issued directing that eleven British regiments then stationed in that island should be augmented each by a company of Sicilians enlisted for seven years' general service under the British crown, it fell to him, as senior subaltern, to raise the regimental quota of men for that purpose. He became captain in the second battalion in 1807. He served with his regiment in Portugal and Spain in 1808–9; in the Walcheren expedition, including the bombardment of Flushing; and subsequently as a regimental officer and as brigade-major of various infantry brigades in the Peninsular campaigns from 1810 to 1814, in the course of which he was present in seventeen engagements, including the battles of Barossa, Salamanca, and Vittoria, and the various actions in the Pyrenees and on the Nivelle, and at the sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, and San Sebastian; had altogether six horses shot under him; and on one occasion—the attack on the entrenchments of Sarre in 1813—was himself very severely wounded. He received a brevet majority for service in the field in 1813, and a brevet lieutenant-colonelcy for Waterloo. At the latter period he was serving as aide-de-camp to his uncle, Major-general Sir Kenneth Mackenzie, afterwards Sir Kenneth Douglas, bart., of Glenbervie, who was commanding at Antwerp, which was in a very critical state, but got leave to join his regiment before the battle, where he commanded the right wing of the 52nd, and had three horses killed under him. He was also present at the capture of Paris, and with the army of occupation in France until 1817, when he retired from active military life. He married in 1826 the daughter of Thomas Price. He became brevet colonel in 1837, was made K.C.H., and C.B. the year following. He became a major-general in 1846, a knight-bachelor in 1848, colonel of 20th foot Feb.–Oct. 1853 and of the 78th highlanders in 1853, and became lieutenant-general in 1854. He had the Peninsular medal with eight clasps, and the Waterloo medal. Chalmers, who was left a widower in 1851, died at his seat, Glenericht, on 2 June 1860. His age appears to have been given incorrectly in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ and other obituary notices.
[Army Lists; Moorsom's Hist. Rec. 52nd Light Infantry; Leeke's Lord Seaton's Regt. at Waterloo, vol. i.; Dod's Knightage; Gent. Mag. 3rd series (ix.) p. 104.]
CHALON, ALFRED EDWARD (1780–1860), portrait and subject painter, younger brother of John James Chalon [q. v.], was born at Geneva on 15 Feb. 1780. He was intended, like his brother, for a commercial life; but he took early to art, and entered the Academy schools in 1797. In 1808 he became a member of the Society of Associated Artists in Water Colours. In the same year he founded, with his brother John and six others, the ‘Evening Sketching Society,’ the meetings of which were continued for forty years, and of which a full account will be found in the ‘Recollections of T. Ewins,’ and in the ‘Recollections and Letters of C. R. Leslie.’ He exhibited his first picture at the Royal Academy in 1810. In 1812 he was elected associate of that body, and became a full member in 1816. ‘He then and for many years afterwards was the most fashionable portrait painter in water colours. His full-length portraits in this manner, usually about fifteen inches high, were full of character, painted with a dashing grace, and never commonplace; the draperies and accessories drawn with great spirit and elegance.’ In his younger days he painted some good miniatures on ivory. Chalon was the first to paint Queen Victoria after her accession to the throne, and received the appointment of painter in water colours to the queen. As a portrait painter in this medium he had an extraordinary and almost unparalleled vogue; but he survived his fame. In 1855, the year following his brother's death, he exhibited, at the rooms of the Society of Arts in the Adelphi, a collection of his own and of John Chalon's works, but it does not seem to have attracted much attention. Leslie, his friend and warm admirer, writes: ‘It was to me a proof, if I had wanted one, of the non-appreciation of colour at the present time that the exhibition of J. and A. Chalon's pictures failed to attract notice.’ If water colours were the medium best suited to his genius, Chalon nevertheless painted a vast number of works in oils, having exhibited altogether upwards of three hundred oil paintings at the Royal Academy and elsewhere in the course of his life. Among his best-known subject pictures may be mentioned ‘Hunt the Slipper,’ 1831; ‘John Knox reproving the Ladies of Queen Mary's Court,’ 1837; ‘Serena,’ 1847; ‘Sophia Western,’ 1857. He was clever in imitating the styles of other painters, and particularly of Watteau, whose pictures he greatly admired.
Chalon had made a large collection of his own and his brother's drawings and paintings. In 1859 he offered them to the inhabitants of Hampstead, together with some endowments for the maintenance of the collection; but the scheme fell through. He then offered
