Joshua H. Shaw

American, born England, c. 1777–1860

Birth placeBillingborough, England

Death placeBordentown, New Jersey, United States

BiographyBorn in Bellingborough, Lincolnshire, England, he became a painter of unidentifiable rural landscapes with darkened foregrounds, often with figures, and streams and distant hills. He was among the earliest pure landscape painters in America, and his style was related to the 17th- century idealized landscapes of Claude Lorraine showing people at ease in the countryside. It was a style replaced in popularity by the French Barbizon School painters whose figures were engaged in more realistic hard-working activity.

He lived in England until he was age forty one and first apprenticed to a sign painter, although he was basically self-taught as a painter. He worked at this trade in Manchester and also painted portraits, landscapes, and genre pieces. Recognized for talent, he exhibited at age 22 at the Royal Academy.

In 1817, he emigrated to Philadelphia and founded the Artists' Fund Society and the Artists and Amateur Association. He published a manual for artists and traveled along the Eastern coast sketching and then published a book of these travels. An inventor, he made improvements on firearm designs and also did early topographical views. About 1843, he settled in Bordentown, New Jersey, but he was not very successful selling paintings during his lifetime and died in poverty.

Many of his watercolors were engraved in aquatint by John Hill and were published in 1820 as "Picturesque Views of American Scenery."

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