Charles Bayliss at the National Library of Australia
Interior of Garden Palace,
Sydney International
Exhibition Building,
1879
albumen print
21.0 x 27.0 cm
nla.pic-an10697078-19
The National Library of Australia is the custodian of one of Australia’s largest collections of images by Charles Bayliss. The collection includes hundreds of prints, both loose and in albums, as well as a large panorama taken in Sydney in 1879. The Bayliss collection has, to date, been strongest for the period of the 1880s. Several hundred images have been digitised and can be viewed on the National Library’s website.
Merlin and Bayliss Collection of Photographic Prints
While developing the exhibition, A Modern Vision: Charles Bayliss, Photographer, 1850–1897, a cache of nearly 1000 prints from the early 1870s came to light. The images, dating from 1872 to 1876, were taken by Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss. This period was critical in the development of Bayliss’s skills as a photographer and in the development of photographic practice in Australia’s colonial history. The collection was commissioned by B.O. Holtermann (1838–1885), patron of the two photographers, and inherited by members of his family.
The newly discovered material comprises cartes-de-visite and larger prints, which are either in loose form or in a leather-bound album. The National Library has acquired this collection, now known as the Merlin and Bayliss Collection of Photographic Prints.
Clipper ship, Cape Clear, Dawes Point, Millers Point, c. 1874 - 1875
Albumen print
22.8 x 28.2 cm
Merlin and Bayliss Collection of Photographic Prints
National Library of Australia
nla.pic-vn4236855
All the photographs in the album were taken in the goldmining towns of Hill End and Gulgong in New South Wales. The American & Australasian Photographic Company, which was run by Beaufoy Merlin, established a studio at Hill End in 1872. It was there that the collaboration between Merlin, Bayliss and Holtermann began.
B.O. Holtermann secured his fame and fortune with the discovery of an enormous 145-kilogram gold nugget at Hawkin’s Hill in the Tambaroora area, New South Wales. The album opens with a sequence of photographs of goldmining activities that were probably produced for Holtermann. It also includes hundreds of outdoor photographs of the towns’ residents and buildings, a theme that was a specialisation of the American & Australasian Photographic Company.
