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SIR WYKE BAYLISS PRBA RWA Date of Birth: 21 November 1835, † 5 April 1906 Place: Madeley, Shropshire, UK Profession: Artist / writer click on the image to view the larger version
Sir Wyke Bayliss was what Edith Sitwell would have dubbed 'an emminent Victorian'. A painter of architectural subjects, often gothic, monumental yet always symbolic in nature, he came to specialise in the rarified depiction of cathedral interiors and was a prolific writer on art and aesthetics.He was the second son of John Cox Bayliss, a railway engineer and a teacher of military and mathematical drawing, and Anne Wyke. Bayliss gained a sound, architectural method of drawing under the tutelage of his father. He later studied at the Royal Academy schools and the School of Design, Somerset House. He was famous for painting architecture and cathedral interiors such as St. Mark's, Venice (1880). His artistic contemporary and sometime friend James McNeill Whistler mockingly referred to him as 'Bayliss the Middlesex Michel Angelo'. Wyke Bayliss sent his best work to the Royal Society of British Artists, of which he was elected a member in 1865. In 1884, Bayliss proposed Whistler be elected to the committee, but soon began to oppose his policies to modernise and expand the society. In about 1888, Theodore Roussel gave Whistler an unflattering drawing of Wyke Bayliss in exchange for A house with a veranda and steps leading down to a garden. Whistler became President in June 1886, but was succeeded by Bayliss in 1888, who held office until his death. Bayliss was elected to the RWA in 1904. His painting 'A French Idyll' of the interior of the Cathedral of st Pierre, Bourges was exhibited on the Second Annual Exhibition of outh African Society of Artists at the Good Hope Hall in 1898.His inclusion in such a colonial exhibition as it was at that time must have been something of an artisticcoup, generating much interest in the local Press: A picture which must command the attention of all who visit the exhibition is the one loan painting in the collection, viz., the very fine picture of the interior of the Cathedral ofSt Pierre at Bourges, by Sir Wyke Bayliss, the President of the Royal Society of British Artists, a work which at the modest price of sixty guineas and providing as it does so admirable an object lesson might with advantage be acquired by the Government for the Art Gallery and the benefit of students generally. This advice was taken up, and the work is today in the SANG Permanent Collection. The circumstances of its inclusion on the exhibition are unknown. It is possible that Bayliss became an honorary patron of SASA when it was founded, and as a gesture had sent the picture to Cape Town on loan. Bayliss' writings on art included his study 'Seven Angels of the Rennaiscance: the Story of Art from Cimabue to Claude' which was published in 1905. He was elected F.S.A. in 1870 and knighted in 1897. He died aged 70 after a short illness at his home at 7 North Road, Clapham Park, London. Click here to return to the members' list