Magazine - The Limner

The Limner began life as a bi-annual Society Magazine but has since developed into a magazine format featuring articles from both members and contributors countywide. The editors welcome illustrated copy from visitors to the website with an interest in Art that they feel our members would enjoy reading.  

Extract from "Edwin Butler-Bayliss 1874-1950"

      "Edwin Butler-Bayliss remains an enigma and yet he was a prominent member of several notable midland societies and was exhibiting as early as 1901 with the Wolverhampton Art Circle, the Birmingham Art Circle and the Birmingham Society of Artists. He was to hold several solo exhibitions throughout his life at the Ruskin Galleries, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham and the Longsdale Chambers, Wolverhampton and the Burlington Gallery, Green Street, Leicester Square and remained a successful exhibitor at the Royal Academy Summer Show over a period of 26 years.

   Edwin was born in 1874 in Tettenhall and was to spend most of his life in this area. He was the eldest of eight children born to Samuel and Emily Bayliss. Samuel was Chairman of the firm of ironfounders, Bayliss, Jones and Bayliss, “described as a nut and bolt manufacturer, a prominent successful business man”, he eventually set up independent works in Brierley Hill with the Leppington family. He no doubt enjoyed the privileged if rigorous upbringing of the Victorian childhood, until in 1888, at the age of 14, he was sent as a boarding pupil to the Rydal Mount School in Colwyn Bay. A recently established Methodist school, it was seen as an ideal choice, the family being long associated with the church.

   The school opened in 1885 under Thomas G Osbourne, described as one of the most distinguished schoolmasters in the country. He was man of high principle, a staunch Methodist, outstanding scholar and considerable athlete. He worked hard and expected his staff and pupils to do the same. Ahead of his time, his one idiosyncrasy being his belief that boys worked better standing than sitting! One of his pupils said, “Physical weariness could make mental concentration well nigh impossible”.

   A shock to the system for any new boy, “home for the next four tears was Old House” and he eventually became a prefect, a role of responsibility within the everyday structure of school life. The school ethos encouraged creative as well as scholastic and sporting achievement. He would have use of an extensive library as well as the Reading Room offering, even, then, four daily papers, ten weekly papers and fourteen monthly magazines. This was no ivory tower, the pupils then as now, followed a stringent learning programme and were required to be au fait with current affairs.

   Out of class, cricket, football and inter-house games were a feature as were the Literary and Debating Society, the Field, Camera and Chess Clubs, Art, Drama and Operatic Society. To a young Black Country youth however privileged, the combination of a charismatic headmaster and challenging environment must have had a deep and lasting influence. He certainly would have returned home with a wider, more informed view of the world, an enquiring mind and a well honed curiosity. He would have discovered the value of application and self discipline whilst looking forward perhaps to more freedom and relaxation!

   At eighteen, Edwin left Rydal Mount School and rejoined the family at the Woodhouse in Wood Road, Tettenhall, slipping back into family life. Younger brothers and sisters would have demanded his company in their games and past-times for he was said to have a lively sense of humour and a fondness for practical jokes. Family photographs show parties, social gatherings, visiting aunts and cousins, cycle rides and excursions in the fleet of family cars. All were a feature of his growing up as were the delights of tennis, cricket and golf, the latter becoming a lasting pleasure.

   Iron works and foundries had long been a part of his background, were in fact the foundation of the family fortunes. No doubt grandfather William took his grandson to the works as once he had taken his father Samuel, regaling him with stories of the ‘old days’ and his own early struggles and hardship. Such tales first learned at the knee were eventually movingly recorded by William for his expanding family who would be unlikely to experience such deprivation and should, he felt, know the background to their own good fortune. It isn’t hard to imagine the impact of the murky air, scarlet mouths of furnaces and shrouded figures of the workforce would have had upon a sensitive young boy.

   In due course Edwin joined his father in the family firm. As the eldest son he would be expected to have an understanding of all aspects of production, working with and for his father with a view, no doubt, to eventually taking responsibility for the company when he stepped down. It isn’t known if his personality or inclination desired such a task but the serious poverty, harsh conditions and scared landscape struck a deep emotional chord and remained a recurring motif in his paintings throughout his life. His interest in art had not waned and Edwin, now in his late twenties, left the firm determined to concentrate on his painting. Samuel may have been disappointed but he supported his son’s ambition and had a substantial studio built for him in the grounds of the family home. It was now, having no formal, full-time art training , he began to learn for himself the various techniques of watercolour, oil painting, pastel and etching. Edwin was no dilettante, he took his painting diligently to study.

    Sir Alfred Hickman was a close family friend and Edwin was given a free run of his large steel works in Bilston. He was a familiar sight collecting ‘visual notes’ for his paintings. Drawing and sketching on the spot using charcoal, pastel or watercolour before working them up into finished paintings in his studio. A painting might have been based on many of these small sketches and has the composition evolved, details adjusted or added, so that the large finished canvas was a freer evocation of the scene rather than a literal recording. Still a keen golfer, when not actually playing he was often seen seeking inspiration amidst greener vistas. One player describes him thus; “marching through the landscape, long-jawed, unsmiling, lost in thought”.

   What began as a pleasing talent gained strength and substance from constant application and increasing skills. In 1901 he exhibited several pictures with the Wolverhampton Art Circle and a local art correspondent declared “ his contributions to the annual show reveal a technical advance so marked as to suggest he has yet to discover the full force of his powerful brushwork. His work is strong but not lacking in sensitiveness. He went on to praise his use of pallet knife, structural emphasis, unity of tone and atmosphere. In 1904 he had work in the spring and autumn exhibitions of the Birmingham Society of Artists. His early delicate work developed into powerful, emotive paintings that led one reviewer in 1911 describing him as “the poet-painter of the industrial scarred country around Wolverhampton with its smoke charred atmosphere”