English Heritage Blue Plaque for sculptor Gilbert Bayes
Sculptor Gilbert Bayes (1872 – 1953) was commemorated with an English Heritage Blue Plaque on 10 December 2007 at 4 Greville Place, St John’s Wood, NW6, London, his home for over twenty years, from 1931 until his death in 1953.
While living at this address Bayes was at the height of his career and completed some of his best-known works, including Queen of Time (1931), the female figure which supports the great clock on the Oxford Street façade of London’s famous department store, Selfridges. Bayes also lovingly introduced his sculptures as decorative additions to his home. Though many of these have since been stolen, some marks of Bayes’ residence at 4 Greville Place remain: an embellishment above a side window and a solitary statue, Great Pan (1929), in the rear garden act as a reminder of the creative environment in which Bayes lived and worked.
Gilbert Bayes was born in London in 1872, one of four children of the painter and etcher Alfred Walter Bayes. Although Alfred Bayes attempted to dissuade his children from following in his footsteps, his two sons, Gilbert and Walter, and daughter Jessie, all became artists. Gilbert showed an early aptitude for modelling and exhibited two wax work models at the Royal Academy in 1889. After leaving school he worked for a firm of tie merchants in the City but continued to pursue his artistic interests by attending evening classes at the City & Guilds School in Finsbury (1891 – 96). From 1896 to 1899 he studied under George Frampton at the Royal Academy Schools, winning the Academy’s gold medal and a travelling scholarship in 1899, which enabled him to study contemporary sculpture in Paris and Italy.
On returning to London, Bayes set up his own studio and – drawing inspiration from chivalric themes and Norse Mythology – began to produce reliefs and statuettes, largely in bronze. His output gradually became more diverse; his materials ranged from copper and enamel to mosaic and plaster, and his interest in the use and impact of colour in sculpture for decorative purposes developed. In the years leading up to the First World War, Bayes was viewed as a leading exponent of the flourishing New Sculpture movement. In 1911, he was commissioned to design the Great Seal for King George V.
By the 1920s, Bayes’ professional standing was well-established, and he had become a key member of the Art Workers’ Guild, serving as Master in 1925. He developed a close connection with master ceramics manufacturer, Doulton, and was the first artist to take an interest in the new medium of polychrome stoneware. This union produced the much admired Queen of Time (1931), and the large-scale relief History of Pottery through the Ages (1938), now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). Bayes formed productive relationships with architects including Thomas Tait and Sir John Burnet, and his many architectural commissions included the frieze of the Saville Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue (1931), and the relief outside Lord’s cricket ground (1934). The fine ceramic finials, designed in the 1930s to adorn the washing-line posts in St Pancras housing estates, underlined his belief that art should be a part of everyone’s daily life. Between 1904 and 1948, Bayes executed around twenty medals for the Home Office and other official bodies, and fittingly enough he served as President of the Royal British Society of Sculptors (1939 – 44).
The post-war years proved a difficult time for Bayes – he found himself increasingly out of sympathy with new artistic trends and suffered from bouts of depression that caused him the destroy some of his own works. He was particularly dismayed by the growing rift between ‘fine art’ and ‘craft’, and exhibited few works in his final years. Bayes died in July 1953.
In recent years, Bayes and his work have been the subject of a revival of interest, thanks in part to the V&A exhibition, the ‘Doulton Story’ (1979), and major retrospectives held at The Fine Art Society, London, and the Henry Moore Centre, Leeds, in 1998. More lasting recognition of Bayes’ work came at the V&A in 2005, when its sculpture gallery was named after him.
Bayes believed that art should be accessible to all, both in terms of location and subject, and his work has become part of the fabric of London. The erection of an English Heritage blue ceramic plaque is a fitting tribute to an artist noted for his pioneering use of polychrome stoneware in architecture.
For further press information and photographs of the Blue Plaque please contact Charlotte Tamvakis, English Heritage Corporate Communications, on 0207 973 3251.
See also www.english-heritage.org.uk/blueplaques
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