The scene depicted in this painting of Tynemouth Castle dates from a period earlier than when the artist was active – the lighthouse on the headland had gone by then – and it may be that Shotton copied this from a contemporary painting or print. Born in North Shields, James Shotton displayed a talent for drawing from an early age and attended the Royal Academy Schools, where he became a close friend of William Holman Hunt. On the death of his father he returned to North Shields, and designed for the town what is believed to be the first Turkish Bath in England; he designed a second one in North Shields, and one in Newcastle. He resumed his artistic studies, and gained a reputation particularly as a portrait painter. He rarely exhibited his work, but one of his portraits of the noted North Shields mathematician and musicologist Wesley Stoker Barker Woolhouse (part of the Collection) was accepted by the Royal Academy in 1863.