John Byam Shaw

John Byam Liston Shaw (1872-1919), commonly known as Byam Shaw, was a British painter, illustrator, designer and teacher.

Byam 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).  Byam Shaw came from an Ayrshire family of lawyers and clerics. 

The couple had five children, including the actor and theatre director Glen Byam Shaw and the art historian James 'Jim' Byam Shaw. 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, and George, a major in the Royal Scots, was killed at Dunkirk in 1940 while second-in-command of the 1st Battalion. 

Byam Shaw was born in Madras; his father, John, was the registrar of the High Court at Madras. The family returned to England in 1878 where they settled in Kensington, living at 103 Holland Row. 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. 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. 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. 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". 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.

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 (Spanish flu) 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. An ornate red, green and gilt monument to his life, in a 15th-century style, still stands there.