Camp, Samuel James

Date born:  1876

Place Born:  

Date died:  1936

Place died:  Bearswood End, Beaconsfield, United Kingdom

Keeper of the Wallace Collection and authority on armour.  Camp was the son of E. D. Camp.  He was educated at Birbeck College.  In 1890 he entered the British civil service of the Conservative Central Office.  By 1900 he had switched to the newly established Wallace Collection, where his duties were initially conceived of as bureaucratic.  In 1908 he was appointed assistant keeper (curator) of the collection.  He married Ada Sarah Jackson in 1912 (d. 1928). He was in charge of removal of the collection to an underground facility during World War I as Hertford House was occupied by the War Department. In 1919 when Sir Guy Laking died, Camp was made inspector of the Amouries as well. He rewrote the amour catalog for the Wallace Collection, except for the final volume. He succeeded D. S. McColl as keeper in 1924.  Shortly thereafter, Camp hired a young Oxford graduate, Philip Hendy (q.v.) to be assistant keeper.  It was Camp who showed Hendy's entries for the Wallace catalog to Trustees of the Gardner Museum in Boston, U.S.A.  This launched Hendy's career, eventually being appointed Director of the National Gallery, London.

Home Country:  United Kingdom

Sources:  "Mr. S. J. Camp Keeper Of The Wallace Collection." The Times (London) May 8, 1936, p. 18; "S. J. Camp." D. S. M. [McColl] The Burlington Magazine 68, No. 399 (June 1936): 298

Bibliography:  "Early Days at the Wallace Collection."  Artwork (Autumn 1930).