Pre Raphaelite Art: John Byam Liston Shaw

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Such Is Life

1907
Leeds

Margaret Nettlefold before Her Dining Room at Winterbourne 1904

872–1919
Nationality: British

British painter and illustrator, born in Madras, the son of a high court official. He came to England in 1878 and studied at St John's Wood School of Art and the *Royal Academy Schools. His style was heavily influenced by the *Pre-Raphaelites and he was at his best with medieval subjects, although at one time his most famous picture was probably The Boer War (1901, City Art Gallery, Birmingham), showing a young woman musing on the death of a loved one. In 1910 he founded the Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole School of Art in Kensington with the painter Rex Vicat Cole (1870–1940), a close friend who later wrote The Art and Life of Byam Shaw (1932). Among the teachers was another close friend, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872–1945), likewise an upholder of the Pre-Raphaelite tradition. The school still continues today as the Byam Shaw School of Art, although it is now located in north London. In 2003 it merged with *St Martin's School of Art.

Text Source: A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art (Oxford University Press)