James Shaw (12 January 1815 – 1 September 1881) was a Scottish painter, photographer, engraver, lithographer,

surveyor Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ca ...

, and lawyer. He was also an early colonist of South Australia.

Biography

Shaw was born on 12 January 1815 at Dumfries, Scotland to James and Isabella Shaw. His father was a clerk and proofreader who painted for pleasure, and his brother George Baird Shaw. Shaw went to Edinburgh Royal High School, and then studied law at

the University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1582 ...

. In September 1836, sponsored by Justice Thomas McCornock, he left Edinburgh for Jamaica to be a bookkeeper. He painted in his free time. When people realised his talent, they started to ask him for commissions. In 1841, he became a

and began taking portrait commissions. In 1847, Shaw learned photography and became a photographer. He married Janet Liddle Paterson on 5 July 1850. Together, they moved to Adelaide in the colony of South Australia. Janet died suddenly in 1868 aged 41, and he raised their six children alone after that. At some point he lived at 17 Wellington Street,

Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...

, in a former pub which had been converted into a dwelling. In 1857, he showed some of his paintings at the first exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts, of which he was a founding member. He received an honourable mention. He continued to paint and exhibit his works until 1871. Shaw produced two paintings of the ship ''

Admella SS ''Admella'' was an Australian passenger steamship that was shipwrecked on a submerged reef off the coast of Carpenter Rocks, south west of Mount Gambier South Australia, in the early hours of Saturday 6 August 1859. Survivors clung to the wre ...

'', which are held in the

Art Gallery of South Australia The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), established as the National Gallery of South Australia in 1881, is located in Adelaide. It is the most significant visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of ...

: the first shows the intact ship, painted in 1858, and the second, a dramatic imagining of the ship getting wrecked on a reef at

Cape Banks Cape Banks is a headland in the Australian state of South Australia located in the gazetted locality of Carpenter Rocks at the south end of Bucks Bay and the north end of Bungaloo Bay on the state's south east coast about west south west of the ...

in 1859.

Art

The

holds the major collection of his work. File:James Shaw - The Admella wrecked, Cape Banks, 6th August, 1859 - Google Art Project.jpg, James Shaw, 1859, ''The Admella Wrecked, Cape Banks, 6th August, 1859'', oil on canvas, 68.5 × 97.7 cm,

, Adelaide

References

External links

Some of James Shaw's works from the 1860s: *186

(near cnr Hackney Rd)Lunatic Asylum, North Terrace
List:
Others

Photos

1935 photos

/ref> *186

built by Stephen King sr *186
All Saints Church, Hindmarsh
*186

*186

The Chamber (later the Legislative Council) *186

*186

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shaw, James 1815 births 1881 deaths Landscape artists 19th-century Australian artists Artists from Adelaide

Biography

Art

References

Further reading

External links