Timeline

1899 - 1903

Attends School of Fine Arts at University of Pennsylvania and graduates with a Bachelor of Architecture; illustrates for the university magazine

1903 - 1906

Attends Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and studies under William Merritt Chase; befriends Charles Sheeler, who also attends PAFA, and the two become life-long friends

1910 - 1914

Paints portraits in the monumental figurative tradition of Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso

1881

Born in Philadelphia; youngest of four children raised in an affluent German family

1904

Travels to England and Holland as part of class conducted by Chase

1905

Travels to Spain as part of Chase’s class

1906

Sheeler and Schamberg live in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where they paint pictures of fishing boats; the two return to Philadelphia and take a studio together

1907

Travels to Paris

1908

Travels again to Europe: Paris and Italy; Sheeler joins him in Rome in December and they visit museums in Rome, Florence, Siena, Milan and Venice

1909

Schamberg leaves Sheeler in Rome and takes separate trip to Tuscany and the Italian coast; travels to Viareggio on the Italian Coast and begins to paint small Cézannian landscapes with bright palettes; returns to Paris, continues to paint, and returns to Philadelphia mid-year

1910

Solo exhibition at McClees Galleries, Philadelphia (some landscapes painted in Viareggio are included in this show)

1912

Schamberg and Sheeler take up photography to earn money

1913

Invited by Arthur B. Davies to exhibit in the Armory Show; from 1913 to 1915 paints in Cubist style, heavily influenced by Gleizes, Metzinger, Picabia and Delaunay, all previously seen at the Armory Show

1914

Participates in group show at Montross Gallery, New York

1916

Begins “machine paintings” derived from objects close at hand and influenced by works of Picabia and Duchamp seen at the 1913 Armory Show; exhibits his “machine paintings” in group show at Bourgeois Gallery, New York; continues photography, mostly of urban scenery; befriends photographer Paul Strand; elected one of twenty-one directors of Society of Independent Artists

1917

Participates in group exhibitions at Bourgeois Gallery; exhibits his photography in a three-man show with Strand and Sheeler at the Modern Gallery, New York

1918

Paints series of watercolors, his last body of work before his premature death at age thirty-seven during the influenza epidemic in Philadelphia