Frederic James Shields (14 March 1833 – 26 February 1911) was a British artist, illustrator and designer closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites through Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown. He was born in Hartlepool, was brought up in extreme poverty, and as a young man was employed on hack-work for commercial engravers. He managed to study art briefly at evening classes in London and then in Manchester, where he settled in about 1848.

He spent much of his artistic life in Manchester, and it was there that his drawings and watercolours were noticed and appreciated.
The Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857 made a great impression on Shields. His style became more elegant and minute. Inspired by Edward Moxon's illustrated edition of Poems by Alfred Tennyson (1857), he started to work in black-and-white as a book illustrator. His designs for Daniel Defoe's History of the Plague (1862) and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1864) were very successful and brought him admirers, among whose were John Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In May 1864 Shields went to London and met Rossetti, through whom he soon came to know the whole Pre-Raphaelite circle.

Frederic Shields was deeply religious man. His faith influenced his artistic manner which was gradually becoming more mannered and mystical in theme. These changes can be seen in his most significant book design – the second edition of Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William Blake (London: Macmillan, 1880. 2 vols). It was inspired by Rossetti.

In 1865, he was elected an associate of the Royal Watercolour Society, but it was not until 1876, after a visit to Italy, that he finally settled in London.

His relations with the Rossetti family remained very close. He was in constant correspondence with Christina Rossetti, and in 1883, after the death of DG Rossetti, his mother commissioned from Shields "two lights in stained glass, to be placed in the little window which overlooks the grave of Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the churchyard at Birchington, near Margate."

Shields made numerous chalk drawings. In 1864 he had begun to experiment with a certain French "compressed charcoal". He showed this medium to Rossetti who at once adopted this material alone for all his larger studies.

Shields also undertook designing of three-dimensional objects of applied art. Several artefacts, designed, painted and signed by Shields are known.

Shields' most important legacy is three successive series of designs for stained glass and mural decorations for the Chapel of Eaton Hall, Cheshire, seat of the Dukes of Westminster (1876–1888); for the private chapel of William Houldsworth in Kilmarnock (1877–1879) and for the St Elisabeth's Church, Reddish, Stockport (1881–1883); and finally for the Chapel of the Ascension, Bayswater Road, London (1888–1910).

This work firmly established his international reputation. It was praised in Boston magazine The Atlantic Monthly in 1882: "It is in the interpretative function of art that Mr Shields has shown his great power; and the interpretation is not of a school of thought, nor of a historic tradition, nor of an individual fancy, but of a catholic and comprehensive conception of the spiritual life. The domination thought is in the vivifying power of the spirit, and the religious sentiment is unhesitating and profound."

In 1884, The New York Times, commenting on Shields' Eaton Hall Chapel designs, wrote: "Mr Shields, who occupies a distinguished position as an artist in England, owes his reputation in part to the notice taken of his early works by Mr J. Ruskin and Rossetti and their judgement of his in his earliest efforts was not mistaken. Mr Shields’s career as an artist, shows, that from making lithographic prints for bedecking bolts of calico, he rose by hard work to be one of the leading painters of religious subjects in England."


Source:
Wikipedia, 2020

Frederick Shields was a Manchester, England painter, watercolourist and decorator whose artistic career was determined when he saw the works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857.

He later became a close friend of both Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown. His two most substantial commissions were windows and mural decorations for the chapel at Eaton Hall, Cheshire, seat of the Duke of Westminster, and the Chapel of the Ascension, Bayswater Road, London.