Robert MacCameron was born on January 14, 1866, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the son of Hattie and Thomas MacCameron, who had been residents of Long Island.
When their son was barely a year old, the parents moved to Necedah, Wisconsin. The artist's childhood and early manhood were spent there, surrounded by wild forest in which he played with Indian children, learning to be a woodsman and an expert rifle shot.
Although Robert's father was moderately well off, the locality offered little in the way of formal education, and in his later years MacCameron used to say that he never had more than one year of schooling.
His commercial success in London enabled him to move on to Paris, where his ability soon won him entrance to the École des Beaux Arts. Here he studied under Jean Léon Gérome, and after Gérome's death, was helped along by Collin and James McNeill Whistler.
At the age of fourteen, MacCameron commanded a man's wage $2. 50 a day and board as a lumberjack. Chance acquaintance with a French drawing teacher awakened his interest in art and gave him an opportunity to develop his talent. He saved his wages until he was able to go to Chicago, where he studied art at the Young Men's Christian Association.
Successful in making a living as an illustrator in Chicago and later in New York, he went to London at the age of twenty-two and obtained employment with a publication called The Boy's Own.
His life in Paris was not easy; he achieved some recognition, but little money, and was often on the verge of starvation. But, fortunately, things took a turn for the better with him after his marriage. In 1904, he received his first public recognition in the form of honorable mention at the Salon des Artistes Français.
In 1907, he painted "Groupe d'Amis, " popularly known as "The Absinthe Drinkers, " which was purchased by the Corcoran Gallery of Washington, D. C. It was not a pleasant picture, but was thought to be technically excellent, showing a rich and luminous color scheme. "The Last Supper, " painted in 1900, was an attempt to dramatize the spiritual significance of a religious theme.
According to the same critic, "The Undercurrent, " "Waiting for the Doctor, " and "Don Quixote" were notable among his pictures. During his last years, MacCameron made his success in portraiture. After long residence abroad he returned to America in 1912 (as a chevalier of the Legion of Honor and a royal knight of La Mancha), to paint the portraits of the wealthy Goelet family.
MacCameron died suddenly in New York of heart disease, in December of that year.
MacCameron was always interested in the poor and destitute, claiming that his "peasant background, " the product of his childhood in a small western town, gave him a sympathy with the common man which most artists could not feel.
He was anxious that his painting have social influence. In "The People of the Abyss, " named after Jack London's novel, he attempted to portray the mystical aspect of human squalor and suffering.
Quotes from others about the person
"MacCameron was at his best, " wrote a critic some years after his death, "when his brush, incisive and remorseless as a knife at a clinic, laid bare the misery and hopelessness of that portion of humanity which heredity or misfortune had submerged and deadened and deformed".
In July 1902, MacCameron married Louise Van Voorhis of Rochester, New York. A son was born in 1904 and a daughter in 1906.
