Joshua Shaw

The Pioneers, about 1838

oil on canvas

19 x 27 in.

James E. Roberts Fund and Emma Harter Sweetser Fund

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Joshua Shaw was born in Bellingborough, Lincolnshire, England where he apprenticed to a sign painter and earned his living at that trade while studying art.  He worked as a landscape painter from 1802-1817 in Bath, exhibiting occasionally at the Royal Academy and the British Institution in London, where he became acquainted with American expatriate artist Benjamin West. Shaw immigrated to Philadelphia in 1817 to oversee the installation of Benjamin West’s painting, Christ Healing the Sick, at the Pennsylvania Hospital.  In 1819 he traveled with his teenage son to the South to create watercolor scenes of the area that were engraved in acquaint and published in 1820 as a book, Picturesque Views of American Scenery.  After returning to Philadelphia, Shaw created over two-hundred oil paintings.

The Pioneers exemplifies the picturesque aesthetic popular among English artists during the late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries. The shadowy valley, rugged woodcutters and twisted trees are all part of the picturesque emphasis on striking contrasts of light and dark, rough textures and intricate forms.  Shaw’s scene may be based on the topography of Pennsylvania’s Delaware Water Gap.  In another allusion to the picturesque, Shaw fashioned two of the rocky features in the distant valley to resemble the ruins of European castles.

Reference

John C. Naeve, etal. 150 Years of Philadelphia Painters and Paintings, Philadelphia:  The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1999. ISBN: 1893287017