Exshaw, Charles (1715?–1771), painter, etcher, and art dealer, was born at Tymon, Co. Dublin, one of the four sons and one daughter of John Exshaw of Dublin, merchant, and his wife Thomasina (née Barry). Their eldest son, Edward (qv) (b. 1710), editor and publisher of the Dublin Newsletter, became a freeman of the city of Dublin in 1733. John (qv), the second son, founded Exshaw's Gentleman's Magazine, and his eldest son Thomas later established Exshaw's brandy house at Bordeaux (1802). Charles Exshaw and his twin brother James were the third and fourth sons. A daughter, Mary, was born in 1721.
Exshaw trained in Dublin with the painter and architect Francis Bindon (qv), who may have encouraged him to study abroad. Exshaw travelled to Paris in 1747, before visiting Flanders and Italy. Some sources suggest that he was awarded a medal for drawing while in Paris, probably from the Académie Royale (Crookshank, 32). He returned to Dublin in 1755, where he held a sale of the paintings, drawings, and sculpture he had collected in Europe at the composer Francesco Geminiani's rooms, Dame Street. By 1757 he was again in Paris, where he studied with the renowned French painter Carle van Loo, and made mezzotint portraits of two of van Loo's sons. In 1759 he moved on to Rome, where he produced an accomplished drawing of a bearded old man, and etched ‘from the life’ the model of Italian painter Carlo Maratti. During this period he also visited Amsterdam, and etched several plates after paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn, including ‘St Peter's bark in a storm’ and ‘Potiphar's wife accusing Joseph’. In 1762 he was back in Dublin, where on 10 February he held another sale of works acquired by him on the Continent. A third sale was held in Dublin in May 1764.
In 1762 Exshaw settled in London, where his attempts to establish an academy of art in Covent Garden proved ineffective. He competed unsuccessfully in the Society of Artist's 1764 competition with the history painting ‘The Black Prince entertaining the captive French monarch after the battle of Crecy’, and in the same year exhibited two paintings at the Society of Artists. He died early in 1771, probably in London. In April of that year his collection of art was sold at Exeter Change.