Samuel V. Chamberlain, accomplished etcher, lithographer, photographer, author, teacher and lecturer, was born in Cresco, Iowa on October 28, 1895. In 1902 his family moved to Aberdeen, Washington. In 1913 Chamberlain's education took place at the University of Washington in Seattle where he studied architecture under Carl Gould. By 1915, he was enrolled in the School of Architecture of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. In 1924 he was living in Paris and in the spring he studied lithography with Gaston Dorfinant and in the autumn and winter months he studied etching and drypoint with Edouard Léon. He published his first etching the following year.

Chamberlain was a member of the National Academy of Design in New York City; the Society of American Etchers in Brooklyn, NY; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Chicago Society of Etchers; Associate member of the National Academy of Design, 1939; the Northwest Printmakers; the Société de la Gravure Originale Noir in Paris; and a Guggenheim Fellow, 1926.

Chamberlain was the author and illustrator of "France Will Live Again" 1940; "Fair is Our Land" 1942; "Sketches of Northern Spanish Architecture" 1928; "Domestic Architecture in Rural France" 1928; "Tudor Homes of England" 1929; "Through France with a Sketch Book" 1929; and “French Provincial Houses" 1932.

Collections representing Chamberlain include the Whistler House Museum of Art in Lowell, MA; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, MA; the Victoria and Albert Museum in England; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, AL; the San Diego Museum of Art in CA; the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, FL; the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, GA; the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA; the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, MI; the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, MN; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO; the Art Gallery, University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH; and the Sheldon Swope Art Museum in Terre Haut, IN.