Desmond Philip Shawe-Taylor LVO (born 30 September 1955) became Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures

Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures

The office of the Surveyor of the King's/Queen's Pictures, in the Royal Collection Department of the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom, is responsible for the care and maintenance of the royal collection of pictures owned by the Sovereign in an official capacity – as...

 in 2005. He succeeded Christopher Lloyd

Christopher Lloyd (art historian)

Christopher Lloyd, CVO is a British art historian and was Surveyor of The Queen's Pictures .Lloyd worked in the Department of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford for twenty years. In 1972, he was appointed to a fellowship at Harvard University's Center for Renaissance Studies, Villa I...

 on Lloyd's retirement.

Shawe-Taylor is the son of Brian Newton Shawe-Taylor

Brian Shawe Taylor

Brian Newton Shawe-Taylor was a British racing driver. He participated in 3 World Championship Grands Prix and numerous non-Championship Formula One races...

 and Jocelyn Cecilia Shawe-Taylor. He was educated at Shrewsbury School

Shrewsbury School

Shrewsbury School is a co-educational independent school for pupils aged 13 to 18, founded by Royal Charter in 1552. The present campus to which the school moved in 1882 is located on the banks of the River Severn in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England...

, University College, Oxford

University College, Oxford

.University College , is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2009 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £110m...

, and the Courtauld Institute of Art

Courtauld Institute of Art

The Courtauld Institute of Art is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art. The Courtauld is one of the premier centres for the teaching of art history in the world; it was the only History of Art department in the UK to be awarded a top...

 in London.

Shawe-Taylor was a lecturer in the History of Art Department of Nottingham University from 1979 to 1996, and director of Dulwich Picture Gallery

Dulwich Picture Gallery

Dulwich Picture Gallery is an art gallery in Dulwich, South London. England's first purpose-built public art gallery, it was designed by Regency architect Sir John Soane and opened to the public in 1817. Soane arranged the exhibition spaces as a series of interlinked rooms illuminated naturally...

 from 1996 to 2005, when he was succeeded by Ian Dejardin

Ian Dejardin

Ian A.C. Dejardin is an art historian and Director of the Dulwich Picture Gallery in Dulwich, southeast London, England. He succeeded Desmond Shawe-Taylor as Director in 2005 and was previously a Chief Curator at the Gallery from 1998....

. He has published several books: Genial Company: the theme of genius in eighteenth-century British portraiture, 1987; The Georgians: eighteenth-century portraiture and society, 1990; Dramatic Art: theatrical paintings from the Garrick Club, 1997; Rembrandt to Gainsborough: masterpieces from Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1999; Shakespeare in Art, 2003; Bruegel to Rubens: masters of Flemish painting, 2007; and The Conversation Piece: scenes of fashionable life, 2009.

In 1987, Shawe-Taylor married Rosemary Gillian North. .