He showed a talent for drawing from an early age and later attended the Royal Academy Schools, where he became a friend of William Holman Hunt.
In 1857, he designed the second domestic Victorian Turkish bath to be built in England at Tyneside House, home of local ironmaster George Crawshay.
[a] Shotton had earlier been taken by Crawshay to see the first Victorian Turkish bath in the British Isles being built at Blarney, near Cork in Ireland.
He was a member of the Cullercoats Artists' Colony, and he rarely exhibited his work, but was well regarded as a portrait painter, twice painting Wesley Stoker Barker Woolhouse (the noted North Shields mathematician), one version of which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1863; and also James Edington.
He also met the Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi when he stayed in Tynemouth in 1854, and painted his portrait.