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Charles Bayliss, Photographer, 1850–1897

Above Govett’s Leap number 304

Above Govett’s Leap number 304 1880s
albumen print
14.4 x 19.3 cm
nla.pic-vn3410439

In contrast with earlier generations of photographers who came to Australia as adults, Charles Bayliss grew up here, having migrated from Suffolk, England, with his family at the age of four or five.

In 1870, at the age of 20, he was apprenticed to Beaufoy Merlin (1830–1873), who owned the grandly named American & Australasian Photographic Company. Merlin was responsible for giving Bayliss a thorough technical training and for instilling in the young photographer an encyclopaedic approach to documentary photography.

Charles Bayliss’s early work owes its existence to the inspired patronage of B.O. Holtermann. In early 1873, Holtermann devised an ambitious scheme to promote immigration to Australia—a ‘Travelling Exposition’ that was to include photographs, initially by Beaufoy Merlin and his American & Australasian Photographic Company. However, after Merlin’s premature death in 1873, the young Bayliss became the prime photographer for the exposition, excelling in the work he subsequently produced in Victoria and New South Wales.

The collaboration between Charles Bayliss and B.O. Holtermann was short-lived—three years at most—but very productive. When it came to an end, probably as a result of Holtermann’s departure overseas in 1876, Bayliss opened his own studio in George Street, Sydney.

In his day, Bayliss’s work was highly regarded and he received numerous prestigious government commissions, including one of the most fruitful in his career for the Royal Commission on Water Conservation in 1886. By the 1890s, when the photographic industry was being reshaped, it appears that his output was decreasing. A new generation of photographers was coming to the fore, with the postcard trade replacing the view trade, which had been Bayliss’s area of specialisation and livelihood. And the photographers employed by the New South Wales Government Printer were undertaking the government commissions that had been important to Bayliss in earlier decades.

Charles Bayliss died in 1897 at the age of 47. His death certificate stated the cause of death as Erysipelas septicaemia (a bacterial infection causing blood poisoning) after a 10-day illness. Bayliss was survived by his wife, Sarah, and six young children.