Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Shaw, John Byam Lister
SHAW, JOHN BYAM LISTER (1872–1919), painter and illustrator, was born at Madras 13 November 1872, the son of John Shaw, registrar of the high court of Madras, by his wife, Sophia Alicia Byam Gunthorpe. He came to England in 1878 and to London in 1879. He was educated privately, and, after having first studied at the St. John's Wood school of art, he entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1889. In 1893 he exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time, when his picture ‘Rose Mary’, an illustration to D. G. Rossetti's poem, was shown. Among his more notable subsequent exhibits are ‘Whither?’ (1896), ‘Love's Baubles’, and ‘The Comforter’ (1897), and ‘Love, the Conqueror’ (1899). For the Canadian War Records Shaw painted a large allegorical picture, ‘The Flag’, which was shown at the Canadian War Memorials exhibition at Burlington House in 1919. Shaw also illustrated a great number of books, among them being Browning's Poems (1898), Tales from Boccaccio (1899), The Chiswick Shakespeare (1900), The Pilgrim's Progress (1904), and Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1909). As an art teacher Shaw was active at the school of art on Campden Hill which he established, in partnership with Rex Vicat Cole, in 1911. He was elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1913.
Byam Shaw has been called ‘a kind of belated pre-Raphaelite’. This description refers, however, mainly to the external trappings of his art, which, while showing the resourceful illustrator's inventiveness and considerable sleight of hand, is yet essentially of a somewhat superficial and scenic character.
Shaw married in 1899 Evelyn, daughter of J. N. Pyke-Nott, of Bydown, North Devon, by whom he had four sons and one daughter. He died in London 26 January 1919.
[A. Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts, Dictionary of Contributors, vol. vii, 1905–1906.]