Chater Paul Chater was born on 3 March 1878 in Calcutta. He was baptised on 4 May 1878 in Armenian Church, Calcutta. He was educated at St. Paul's School, West Kensington in 1886. ¹

He was in the 1st Battalion Calcutta Volunteer Rifles as a Second Lieutenant. in October 1898 in Calcutta. He sailed from Calcutta "Sometime after 1901" to Hong Kong. He was a member of the Jury List in 1905 in Hong Kong. ² In 1905 he was a Stock broker with Vernon & Smyth in Hong Kong. ² In 1906 he was again listed as a Broker in Vernon & Smyth, Hongkong. ³ He continued to be listed as a member of the Jury List in 1906 in Hong Kong. ² In 1907 he was listed as a Secretary in Hong Kong Iron Mining Co Ltd. ⁴ In 1907 he was resident in Hong Kong. ⁴ He continued to be listed as a member of the Jury List in 1907 in Hong Kong. ⁴ In 1908 he was resident in Hong Kong, probably living with his uncle, Sir Paul Chater. ⁴ In 1908 he he continued to be listed as a Secretary in Hong Kong Iron Mining Co Ltd. ⁴ He continued to be listed as a member of the Jury List in 1908 in Hong Kong. ⁴ He and Aileen went on their first date on 18 June 1908 in London. ⁵

He married Aileen Margaret BALTHAZAR on 19 November 1908 in St. Mary Abbots, London. ⁶ He and Aileen Travelled to India on 10 February 1909 from the UK. ⁷ He first experienced Military Service with the 12th Battalion Scottish Rifles on 5 December 1914 in London. ¹ He was described as 5ft 9 1/2 inches tall, and weighed approximately 154 lbs. He had a maximum chest measure of 40" and a minimum chest measurement of 36 1/2". His hearing, teeth, vision and colour vision were all good. He was passed fit on 8 December 1914 in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He Left military service on 22 March 1916 in Le Havre. He embarked on the 23rd March 1916 arriving in Southampton on the same day. He was a Captain with the 12th Battalion Scottish Rifles attached to the 1st Kings Own Scottish Borders 87th Brigade, 29th Division at this time. He was due to return on 30th March 1916. However he did not return on that day as he was then requested to attend the Medical Board in London on the 5 April 1916. A note in his military record says ".......aggravated by exposure..........". ¹ He was granted sick leave from 31 March 1916 to 16 May 1916 in London. ¹ On the 23 May 1916 he saw the Medical Board in London and was again granted extended military sick leave until 22 June 1916 in London. ¹ He returned to the Medical Board and again Left military service on 23 June 1916 in London and this was extended until 30th June 1916. His Military Service was relinquished on medical grounds on 6 July 1916. In 1918.  Chater was an artist/painter. He made a will on 17 July 1935 in London. ⁸ In 1949 he was resident in South Kensington, London. ⁹ He died on 11 January 1949 in London. He was cremated on 17 January 1949 in Kensal Green Cemetery, London. ¹⁰ He had his estate probated on 31 January 1949 in London. ⁸

Biography of Chater Paul Chater extract from "An Assemblage of Indian Army Soldiers & Uniforms"

He lived in India for about twenty years before coming to England to study mining engineering. He did not complete the course. It was fortunate that he did not have to earn his living as it seems that he would not have been very good at doing so. He spent some time in the Far East as assistant to his uncle. Sir Paul Chater, one of the great Hong Kong merchants. He was not cut out for a business career and his value to the firm was more social than commercial. He travelled widely in the East and married Miss Aileen Balthazar, daughter of another great eastern trading house. They had one daughter, who became Mrs Brickwood in 1940 and died twelve years later.

Chater was a member of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Volunteer Defence Force but when war broke out in 1914 he returned to Britain and was commissioned in the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), with whom he served, except for a period of secondment to the King's Own Scottish Borderers, until the end of the war. He fought in France and Gallipoli and was demobilized after the Armistice as a captain.

After the war he settled in London but both he and his wife were used to the Far East and they found the English winters cold. They started to spend them on the Riviera until in the early twenties they moved to Nice, where they lived until they returned to a flat in Kensington in 1931.

It was while he was living in Nice that Chater started to paint pictures of Indian Army uniforms. He had no training in art and his extraordinary manual dexterity was the more surprising since on the surface he was a hearty, charming, outdoor type, always gay, easy-going and exuberant. He had a plus handicap at golf and was a confirmed pub-goer. After his return to England he was a habitue of The Pembroke Arms in the Earls Court Road, a district not then as seedy as it has since become. It was there that he founded a private drinking circle known as 'The Mice'. The title was taken from a remark ascribed to George Graves, the comedian, that he 'was paid on Friday night and spent Saturday morning chasing pink mice with a butterfly net'. The initiates, who included an MP and an assistant editor of The Times, wore a tie decorated with pink mice and butterfly nets. In the middle thirties he took a flat in the West Cromwell Road and there, after The Pembroke Arms had closed, he was liable to spend the rest of the night playing vingt-et-un with his friends. As his eyesight began to fail he took to constructing intricate 8-inch ship models, which he found less taxing to his eyes than painting. Never happier than when attending a party, he was a cook of note and up to his death in 1949 was collecting for publication a book of Indian recipes. He was always a generous man even when the income from his eastern investments shrank to a trickle during the Second World War. An expert on historical uniforms recently remarked that it was a tragedy that the artists who got the uniforms right always painted the wearers as if they were stuffed dummies, while those who could paint real live men always fell down on the details of the uniform. As a generalization this is depressingly true but it is certainly not applicable to Chater. However glorious and accurate the uniforms he depicted the portraits of the wearers are always fascinating. Yet it is improbable that he ever painted from a live model. Indians of the military classes were almost unprocurable on the Riviera in 1928 and they were rarer in Earls Court than they have since become. He therefore based his pictures entirely on printed material. Many were derived from published works, mostly from magazines such as the Illustrated London News and the Navy and Army Illustrated, both periodicals with a very high standard of photographic reproduction. None of them, of course, was printed in colour. Indeed colour printing in those days was as likely to mislead as to inform. The details of colour he obtained from Indian Dress Regulations and similar reference books, of which he acquired a fine library. He was also a regular student at the India Office Library, checking details that he could not confirm elsewhere.

According to his son-in-law he would start by making 'a rough sketch, paying particular attention to the face in order to ensure that it was correct for the particular regiment - Sikh, Dogra, Pathan, Punjabi or whatever it might be. His next move was to check all the details of colours, badges, medal ribbons against the Dress Regulations. Having got all the uniform details in note form on his rough sketch, the next step was to do the head on a much larger scale than the figure was to be; this was to ensure that all the detail was correct before reducing it to fit on the body in the final drawing. All the colour details and fine work on the eventual drawing had to be painted under a magnifying glass.' A few of the preliminary drawings of heads, some in more than one version, have been preserved and are reproduced in this book.

Not all the source material was in the form of photographs. There was no shortage of coloured reproductions of Indian uniforms. Chater certainly used some of these, especially the works of A. C. Lovett and Richard Simkin, as a basis, but only as a basis. Occasionally a pose was adopted from an earlier painting but every detail was cross-checked and verified. Above all the face was a genuine creation of Chater's and the figure had none of the woodenness of so much of Simkin's work.

Very occasionally apparent errors creep in. For the most part these were in the titles of regiments or in the date ascribed to a particular regiment. Such minor errors are excusable, since there was no check list to which reference could be made for more than two decades after the artist's death. In a very small number of cases there seem to be minor errors in the details of a uniform. But it must be remembered that in all British-inspired armies there is always a tendency to depart from the strict letter of the Regulations, either because some old garment is being 'worn out' before being replaced with a newly authorized pattern or because of some whim of regimental particularism. The fact that a few of these uniforms are not strictly according to the rules is more likely to mean that someone was wearing non-regulation dress than that Chater made a mistake.

Aileen Margaret BALTHAZAR ¹¹ was the daughter of Carapiet 'Car' BALTHAZAR (1839-1901) and Ovsanna (Hosannah) Jane ARRAKIEL (1852-1895).

He was a bachelor at the time of his marriage.

Sources

1	"Military Service Record".
	National Archives, London.

2	"Government Gazette".
	Public Records Office, Hong Kong.

3	"The Chronicle & Directory for China, Japan etc.". Foreign residents for 1906.

4	"Government Gazette". year: 1907 p.5.
	Public Records Office, Hong Kong.

5	Christopher Carlisle, "Book: A Merry widow and Two Gentlemen 1906-1914". p.67.

6	"Direct family descendant". The marriage certificate of Aileen and Chater was very kindly lent to me by Jill Albiston (nee Brickwood), their grand-daughter, in January 2007.

7	Christopher Carlisle, "Book: A Merry widow and Two Gentlemen 1906-1914". p.81.

8	"The Will of Chater Paul Chater (retired Captain).".

9	"Probate Department".
	Principal Registry of the Family Division, First Avenue House 42-49 High Holborn London.

10	"Newspaper". Online The Times. Jan 13 1949 Pg.1, Issue 51278; col A. Text From Source: CHATER - On Jan 11 1949, at 17 West Cromwell Road, SW5, CHATER PAUL CHATER. Cremation, 11a.m. Monday Jan 17 at Kensal Green. Flowers to Ballard, 306 Old Brompton Road, SW5.

11	Armenian Church, "Armenian Holy Church of Nazareth, Calcutta". The actual baptism certificate for Aileen Margaret was kindly lent to me by her grand-daughter Jill Albiston (nee Brickwood) in January 2007.