Byam Shaw

Background

Byam Shaw was born on November 13, 1872 in Madras, British India (present-day Chennai, India). He was the son of John Shaw, a registrar of the High Court at Madras, and Sophia Alicia Byam Gunthorpe.

Education

Byam Shaw studied at St. John's Wood Art School, where he met such artists, as Gerald Fenwick Metcalfe, Rex Vicat Cole and his future wife Evelyn Pyke-Nott.

In 1890, Shaw enrolled at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Career

Throughout his career, Byam Shaw worked competently in a wide variety of media, including oils, watercolour, pastels, pen and ink and deployed techniques, such as dyeing and gilding. He was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites and took many of his subjects from the poems of Rossetti.

The painter exhibited frequently at Dowdeswell and Dowdeswell's gallery, where he had at least five solo exhibitions between 1896 and 1916.

Later in his life, when his popularity as an artist waned, Shaw began to work as a teacher to earn a living. Since 1904, he taught at the Women's Department of King's College London. In 1910, together with Rex Vicat Cole, he established the Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole School of Art, which was later renamed as the Byam Shaw School of Art.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Byam was drafted into the Artists Rifles, but soon he was transferred to the Special Constabulary. The painter continued to make war cartoons, that were published in many newspapers.

He also worked on memorial commissions till the end of his life in 1919.

Achievements

• Shaw's most famous works are "Jezebel", "The Boer War", "The Greatest of All Heroes is One" and "The Woman, the Man and the Serpent". In 1910, he co-founded Byam Shaw School of Art together with Rex Vicat Cole.
  
  In 1892, the painter attained Armitage Prize for his work "The Judgement of Solomon".

Works

More photos

• painting

  • The Call

  • Silent Noon

  • Jezebel

  • Amor Mundi

  • A Dirge

  • The Flag

  • Garden of Kama

  • Pelagia and Hypatia. Illustration from a 1914 Edition of Charles Kingsley's 1853 Novel Hypatia

  • Rising Spring

  • The Boer War

  • The Greatest of All Heroes is One

  • The Woman, the Man and the Serpent

  • Sitting Nude with Tied Wrists

  • Regatta

  • Carmen

  • St George Slaying the Dragon

Connections

In 1899, Byam Shaw married the artist Evelyn Caroline Eunice Pyke-Nott, later known as Evelyn CE Shaw. The couple had five children, including the actor and theatre director Glen Byam Shaw and the art historian James Byam Shaw.

Father:

John Shaw

Mother:

Sophia Alicia Byam Gunthorpe

child:

Glen Byam Shaw

child:

James Byam Shaw

Wife:

Evelyn Caroline Eunice Pyke-Nott

colleague:

Rex Vicat Cole