Dates

• Existence: 1850 - 1897

Biography

Charles Bayliss was born in Hadleigh near Ipswich, Suffolk in 1850. He moved to Melbourne in 1854. In 1866 he became an apprentice to Beaufroy Merlin, who traded as the American and Australasian Photographic Company (Turner 1996, p.427). Merlin and Bayliss toured Victoria photographing views. In 1870 Merlin established a portrait studio in George Street, Sydney. However, this was soon run by a Mr. Clark, leaving Merlin and Bayliss to concentrate on views. Merlin and Bayliss moved to the gold rush town of Hill End in 1872 (Davies and Stanbury 1985, p.62).

After Merlin's death in 1873, Bernard Holtermann commissioned Bayliss to make a photographic record of Australia. Bayliss used large wet plate negatives and produced a number of large composite panoramas, including an image of Sydney. In 1876 Holtermann exhibited a number of these panoramas in America, Europe and Australia, including at Philadelphia's Centennial International Exhibition, the Paris Exposition Universelle Internationale of 1878 and Sydney's International Exhibition of 1879-80 (Turner 1996, p. 427; Willis 1988, pp.70-71).

In 1876 Bayliss acquired his own premises in Sydney. From 1876 to 1900 he occupied a variety of addresses on George Street. In 1886 he was appointed official photographer for the Royal Commission on Water Conservation (Davies and Stanbury 1985, p.129). Bayliss married in 1883 and had seven children. He died on June 4th 1897 (Turner 1996, p.427).

Likenesses:

See p.63 of Davies and Stanbury's 'The mechanical eye..' (1985), also p.69 of Willis's 'Picturing Australia..' (1988) and between p.176 and p.177 of Cato's 'The story of the camera...' (1955).

Sources:

Cato, Jack (1955), 'The story of the camera in Australia'. Melbourne: Institute of Australian Photographers.

Davies, Alan and Stanbury, Peter (1985), 'The mechanical eye in Australia: photography 1841-1900'. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Turner, Jane ed. (1996), 'The dictionary of art'. Volume 3. New York: Grove.

Willis, Anne-Marie (1988), 'Picturing Australia: a history of photography'. North Ryde, NSW, Australia: Angus and Robertson, 1988.

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