Byam Shaw
{{Short description|British painter, illustrator, designer and teacher (1872–1919)}}
{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}
{{Infobox artist
| name = Byam Shaw
| image = Mr-Byam-Shaw-criticising-a-student-s-work-in-the-costume.jpg
| imagesize =
| caption = Shaw criticising a student's work.
| birth_name = John Byam Liston Shaw
| birth_date = {{birth date|df=yes|1872|11|13}}
| birth_place = Madras, British India
| death_date = 26 January 1919 (aged 46)
| death_place = London, England
| nationality = British
| field = Painting, illustration
| training = St John's Wood Art Schools
Royal Academy Schools
| awards = Armitage Prize}}
John Byam Liston Shaw (13 November 1872 – 26 January 1919), commonly known as Byam Shaw, was a British painter, illustrator, designer and teacher. He is not to be confused with his sons, Glen Byam Shaw, actor and theatre director, and James Byam Shaw, art historian and director of Colnaghi's, who both used "Byam Shaw" as a surname.
Family
John Byam Liston Shaw was the son of John Shaw and his wife, Sophia Alicia Byam Gunthorpe. In 1899, Byam Shaw married the artist, Evelyn Caroline Eunice Pyke-Nott, later known as Evelyn CE Shaw (1870–1959).{{Citation |url= http://www.answers.com/topic/byam-shaw |contribution= Byam Shaw family |title= OUP Art Encyclopedia |publisher= Answers}}. Evelyn's sister was Isabel Codrington, another early twentieth century artist. Byam Shaw came from an Ayrshire family of lawyers and clerics. The Ayrshire Shaws were a cadet branch of the Shaws of Tordarroch, chiefs of the Clan Shaw. Byam Shaw's forebears included the two reverend Shaws (father and son) referred to in Burns' "Twa Herds".Dr. Andrew Shaw of Craigie, and Dr. David Shaw of Coylton – A History of Clan Shaw, by Major C.J. Shaw of Tordarroch. Phillimore & Co., Ltd. Sussex 1983, {{ISBN|978-0850333855}}. Evelyn's family, the Pyke-Notts, were gentry from Swimbridge and Parracombe in North Devon.A genealogical and heraldic history of the landed gentry of Great Britain & Ireland by Sir Bernard Burke
The couple had five children including the actor and theatre director Glen Byam Shaw and the art historian James 'Jim' Byam Shaw.{{Citation|url=http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/shawj.htm|format=biography|contribution=Jim Byam Shaw|title=Dictionary of art Historians|access-date=19 December 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101127185311/http://dictionaryofarthistorians.org/shawj.htm|archive-date=27 November 2010|url-status=dead|df=dmy-all}}. Their only daughter, Barbara, married Rear-Admiral A.F. Pugsley. Another son, David, a naval officer and destroyer captain, awarded the OBE, was killed at sea during World War II while in command of HMS Stanley,{{cite news |title=Admiralty |url=https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/35495/supplement/1317/data.pdf |access-date=18 November 2022 |work=The London Gazette |issue=35495 |date=20 March 1942 |page=1317}} and George, a major in the Royal Scots, was killed at Dunkirk in 1940Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore {{ISBN|0141024372}} while second-in-command of the 1st Battalion. The family is depicted in the artist's semi-autobiographical pastel painting My Wife, My Bairns and My Wee Dog John (1903).
Life and work
Byam Shaw was born in Madras; his father, John, was the registrar of the High Court at Madras.The Art and Life of Byam Shaw by Rex Vicat Cole, Seeley Service and Co. Ltd, London, 1932 The family returned to England in 1878 where they settled in Kensington, living at 103 Holland Row.Tim Barringer (2000). [https://books.google.com/books?id=G3qRP6399tcC&pg=PA64 'Not a "modern" as the word is now understood'? Byam Shaw, imperialism and the poetics of professional society], in: David Peters Corbett, Lara Perry (eds.) English Art, 1860–1914: Modern Artists and Identity. Manchester University Press. {{ISBN|07190 55199}}. He showed early artistic promise, and in 1887 his work was shown to John Everett Millais, who recommended that the 15-year-old should enter the St John's Wood Art School.{{Citation|title=Shaw|url=http://www.artmagick.com/archive/artists/artist.aspx?artist=shaw|publisher=Artmagick|access-date=19 December 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071028015418/http://www.artmagick.com/archive/artists/artist.aspx?artist=shaw|archive-date=28 October 2007|url-status=dead|df=dmy-all}}. There, he first met fellow artists Gerald Fenwick Metcalfe (also born in India) and Rex Vicat Cole. He also met Evelyn Pyke-Nott, his future wife, there. From 1890, Shaw studied at the Royal Academy Schools where he won the Armitage Prize in 1892 for his work The Judgement of Solomon.
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.{{cite book|title=A Victorian Salon: Paintings from the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum|publisher=Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, Lundl Humphries|isbn= 0-85331-748-8|page=84|year=1999}} He exhibited frequently at Dowdeswell and Dowdeswell's gallery in New Bond Street, where he had at least five solo exhibitions between 1896 and 1916.
Later in his life his popularity as an artist waned, and he turned to teaching for his living.Oxford Dictionary of National Biography He taught at the Women's Department of King's College London from 1904 and in 1910, with Rex Vicat Cole, he founded the Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole School of Art later renamed simply the "Byam Shaw School of Art".{{Citation |url=http://courses.csm.arts.ac.uk/byamshaw/area.asp?area=1 |title=Byam Shaw School of Art |place=Central St Martins |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20071218095257/http://courses.csm.arts.ac.uk/byamshaw/area.asp?area=1 |archivedate=18 December 2007 |df=dmy }}. Evelyn Shaw had an active role in the new school, teaching the miniatures class, her area of expertise. Shaw had had a long association with the artist and illustrator Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, who taught at the new school.{{Citation|contribution=Where To Study Art – The Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole School of Art|first=Gladys Beattie|last=Crozier|year=1910|title=Every Woman's Encyclopaedia|url=http://chestofbooks.com/food/household/Woman-Encyclopaedia-2/Where-To-Study-Art-The-Byam-Shaw-And-Vicat-Cole-School-Of-Art.html|publisher=Chest of books}}.
File:The Call, Byam Shaw, 1917.png, published in 1917.]]
At the outbreak of the First World War Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole enlisted in the Artists Rifles although Shaw soon transferred to the Special Constabulary. He produced war cartoons that were published in many newspapers and also found work with memorial commissions. Not long after the war ended, Shaw collapsed and died at age 46 in the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic and was interred at Kensal Green Cemetery. His funeral was held at St Barnabas', Addison Road. Years before, he had designed two yellow-hued stained glass windows for this church, depicting Saints Cecilia and Margaret.{{Citation|url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=49871&strquery=byam#s2|title=Description of Byam Shaw's St Barnabas windows and his memorial|publisher=British History|place=UK}}. An ornate red, green and gilt monument to his life, in a 15th-century style, still stands there.{{Citation|url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=49919|title=Photo of the monument to Byam Shaw|publisher=British History|place=UK}}.
Notable works
File:John Liston Byam Shaw 003.jpg|Jezebel
File:John Liston Byam Shaw Boer War.jpg|The Boer War
File:John Byam Liston Shaw - The Greatest of All Heroes is One.jpg|The Greatest of All Heroes is One
File:John Liston Byam Shaw The Woman The Man the Serpent.jpg|The Woman, the Man and the Serpent
=Paintings=
- Jezebel (1896 – Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth). The painting, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1896, originally depicted Jezebel nude, flanked by her hand-maidens. The model was Rachel Lee, a close friend of Byam Shaw. Unable to sell the painting, he later reworked it so that the central figure was shown clothed.
- Love the Conqueror (1899). Now lost, but documented in a series of photographs taken during its creation, Byam Shaw considered this his masterpiece. The work contains over 200 figures. Widely lauded at the time of its exhibition, it is now recognised as somewhat flawed.
- The Boer War (1901, City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery{{Citation|first=Tim|last=Barringer|contribution=Shaw, (John) Byam Liston (1872–1919)|url= http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/printable/36049|title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|publisher=Oxford University Press|date=September 2004}} {{subscription required}}). The subtitle for this painting referring to the Second Boer War (1899–1902) is 'Last summer green things were greener, brambles fewer, the blue sky bluer', a Christina Rossetti quote.
- The Greatest of All Heroes is One (1905); inspired by a Thomas Carlyle quote, the painting reinterprets Carlyle's 'Great Man' with a more imperialistic ideal. Another lost work, it included amongst its large cast colonial military heroes of the Victorian era such as General Gordon and General Nicholson standing alongside historical icons like Alexander the Great.
- The Woman, the Man and the Serpent (1911).
- Omphale (1914).
- Love's Baulbes (1897) '', Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
=Book illustrations=
- {{Citation | title = Poems | author-link = Robert Browning | first = Robert | last = Browning | year = 1897}}.{{Citation |url= http://www.answers.com/topic/john-byam-liston-shaw-1 |title= John Byam Liston Shaw |format= biography |encyclopedia= OUP Art Encyclopedia |publisher= Answers}}.
- {{Citation |title= Tales | last = Boccaccio |others= Joseph Jacobs trans | year= 1899 | publisher = G. Allen |url= https://archive.org/details/talesfromboccacc0000unse}}.
- {{Citation |title= Chiswick Shakespeare | series=Works.1899| publisher=G. Bell & Sons| url=http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003111007}} – 500 plates.
- {{Citation |authorlink= Adela Florence Nicolson |first= Laurence |last= Hope | title= The Garden of Kama | year = 1901}} – these illustrations form some of Byam Shaw’s more famous ones.
- {{Citation | title = Old King Cole's Book of Nursery Rhymes | others = 25 plates, engraved and printed at the Racquet Court Press by Edmund Evans, published by Macmillan | year = 1901}}.
- {{Citation | title = Historic Record of the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra | year = 1904}} – commissioned to produce 34 illustrations.
- {{Citation | title = Pearl-Maiden: A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem | author-link = H. Rider Haggard | first = H. Rider | last = Haggard | year = 1903}}.Visual Haggard: The Illustration Archive "[http://visualhaggard.org/editions/15]"
- {{Citation | title = The Blessed Damozel | author-link = Dante Gabriel Rossetti | first = Dante Gabriel | last = Rossetti| year = 1906}}.
- {{Citation | title = The Great Operas: The Ring of the Nibelung | first = J. Cuthbert (James Cuthbert) | last = Hadden | year = 1907}}.
=Other works=
- Designed costumes for Beerbohm Tree's Much Ado About Nothing at His Majesty's Theatre (1904).
- Assisted Edwin Austin Abbey in the scheme to decorate one of the corridors in the Palace of Westminster with murals.
- Act Drop for the London Coliseum (1914). No longer in existence, the curtain Byam Shaw designed for the Coliseum featured Shakespeare presiding over a court of 101 diverse figures including Gainsborough and Elgar.
- Stained glass for St Barnabas Church, Kensington.
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
{{Commons category|John Byam Liston Shaw}}
- {{Cite NIE|wstitle=Shaw, Byam|year=1905 |short=x}}
- {{Gutenberg author | id=7937| name=Byam Shaw}}
- {{Internet Archive author |sname=Byam Shaw |sopt=t}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shaw, Byam}}
Category:Deaths from the Spanish flu pandemic in England
Category:Academics of King's College London
Category:Artists' Rifles soldiers
Category:Academics of the Byam Shaw School of Art
Category:Alumni of St John's Wood Art School