James Shaw

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

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. and the second, a dramatic imagining of the ship getting wrecked on a reef at Cape Banks in 1859.

Artworks The Art Gallery of South Australia holds the major collection of his work.