Byam Shaw: The Garden of Kama

PD Images above: Indian-born British painter, illustrator, designer and teacher Byam Shaw’s illustrations for The Garden of Kama, collection of poems by Adela Florence Nicolson (Laurence Hope).

John Shaw (1872-1919) is famous for his juicy illustrations for ‘The Garden of Kama’ by Adela Florence Nicolson, who used to write under a pseudonym, Laurence Hope. The book, published in 1914 by William Heinemann, London, is a collection of love poems which were not translated from Indian literature as commonly thought, but they were originals written by Nicolson in times when it was difficult for a female writer to publish such texts, hence her pseudonym.

The themes were inspired by The Kama Sutra (or Kamasutram or Kamasutra), an ancient Indian Hindu text written by written by Mallanaga Vatsyayana in the second century CE, widely considered to be the standard work on human sexual behavior. Traditionally, the first transmission of Kama Shastra (science of sex) or ‘Discipline of Kama’ (Kama means sensual or sexual pleasure) is attributed to the sacred bull Nandi, Lord Shiva's doorkeeper, who was moved to sacred utterance by overhearing the lovemaking of the god and his wife Parvati and later recorded for the benefit of mankind.

Byam Shaw: The Woman the Man the Serpent

PD Photo: ‘The Woman The Man The Serpent’, oil painting by Indian-born British painter, illustrator, designer and teacher Byam Shaw (1872-1919), depicting Adam, Eve and the serpent.

John Byam Liston Shaw (1872-1919), known popularly as Byam Shaw, was an Indian-born British painter, illustrator, designer and teacher.

Byam Shaw was born in Madras (now Chennai, India), where his father John Shaw was the Registrar of the High Court of Madras. His family returned to England in 1878 and settled in Kensington. At the age of 15, Byam Shaw entered the St John's Wood Art Schools. From 1890 Shaw studied at the Royal Academy Schools, where he won the Armitage Prize in 1892 for his work “The Judgement of Solomon”.

Byam Shaw worked with equal ease and mastery in a variety of mediums including oils, watercolors, pastels, pen-and-ink and also specialized in techniques such as dyeing and gilding. Because of his waning popularity as an artist, Byam Shaw took up teaching for a living, and taught at the Women's Department of King's College London from 1904. He founded the Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole School of Art in 1910 with his Rex Vicat Cole. The institution was later renamed as Byam Shaw School of Art.

Shaw was influenced by Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti, Millais, and Leighton. He was also inspired by Indian themes and Indian/ Hindu mythology, on which he created a number of paintings.