Born Montrose, died Edinburgh, 28 February. Painter in oil and watercolour; domestic genre, portrait and landscape. Son of the captain of a coasting vessel, he was apprenticed to a ship's chandler and in 1853 went to Edinburgh where, aged 20, he enrolled at the Trustees Academy studying under Scott Lauder and becoming friendly with his fellow student McTaggart. In his second year won fifth prize and in his third year won first prize. In 1857 he returned to Montrose but two years later went back to Edinburgh and a year later, in 1860, exhibited his first picture. In Edinburgh he led a quiet and uneventful life working at his art, interspersed by occasional sketching trips to Ireland, the Continent, Skye and his favourite Glenesk. A visit to Brittany with John Pettie in 1862, and a short visit to Paris and the Low Countries in 1874, when he became re-acquainted with Josef Israels, whom he had met once before in Aberdeen in 1870, were important events. These were the only visits to mainland Europe that he ever made.

His genre paintings and portraits are usually of single figures seated in dimly lit interiors, often placed in strong light ad shade reminiscent of Scott Lauder, friend of the Aberdeen connoisseur and collector, John Forbes Whyte. Whyte was a patron of Bosboom, Mauve, Monninger and especially Israels. Chalmers's acquaintance with these painters almost certainly affected his technique and choice of palette. His portrait of Israels in Aberdeen AG is inscribed 'A notre ami Whyte'. Always sensitive to colour, it was a long time before he threw off an early looseness. Disinterested in politics and literature and knowing very little history, he was nevertheless a fine and influential artist who has received more attention commensurate with the quality of his work than perhaps any other Scottish painter. 

Pinnington wrote that for Chalmers 'art was a mysterious problem awaiting solution. He aimed at a perfection beyond human attainment, and spent his life in a dream of beautiful colour and the transformations of light .. to him the better part of art resided in colour. His every study is an experiment in analysis. He probes the mystery concealed in light: how it touches a young cheek with the bloom of the peach; turns yellow hair to living gold, and ashen rocks to silver. He seeks the secret in the shady pool, in the mists of the mountain side and Highland valley and in the veiled glories of the Scottish gloaming. He was an alchemist seeking the elixir of light. His aim was always purely artistic, whether his theme were a face, a flower, a landscape, or took him into the undefined field of genre. He stands by himself in a single-hearted devotion of pure art'. The Art Journal of 1894 spoke of him as 'a greater man than Reid'. Being so preoccupied with light and colour, his figures were sometimes weakly drawn but with a soft and mysterious charm. As a man he was warmly, even intensely, loved by his fellows. 'It is difficult for anyone who did not know him personally to understand fully the fascination he seems to have possessed for those who did' and goes on to relate how one of his friends once said 'we could have better spared a better man supposing we had had one' [Caw]. This emphasizes the sadness caused by Chalmers's premature death at the age of 55 in an accident, the probability being that he was murdered. Although his watercolour output was limited, Halsby suggests that he may have used watercolour for preliminary sketches as did his friend McTaggart. Married a miniature painter.

Founder member of the RSW in the year of his death. Elected ARSA 1867, RSA 1871, RSW 1878. Exhibited six works at the RA between 1863 and 1876 but principally at the RSA, almost continuously between 1855 and 1879, GI (31) and AAS 1886-1926. A rare watercolour sketch 'The Legend' is in Aberdeen AG. Represented in NGS (10), SNPG (6), including 'Self portrait', Aberdeen AG, Glasgow AG, Kirkcaldy AG, Paisley AG, Perth AG.