British painter and illustrator, born in Madras, the son of a high court official. He came to England in 1878 and studied at St John's Wood School of Art and the *Royal Academy Schools. His style was heavily influenced by the *Pre-Raphaelites and he was at his best with medieval subjects, although at one time his most famous picture was probably The Boer War (1901, City Art Gallery, Birmingham), showing a young woman musing on the death of a loved one. In 1910 he founded the Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole School of Art in Kensington with the painter Rex Vicat Cole (1870–1940), a close friend who later wrote The Art and Life of Byam Shaw (1932). Among the teachers was another close friend, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872–1945), likewise an upholder of the Pre-Raphaelite tradition.