A previously unrecorded & terrific quality group of five of the earliest known photographic views of the waterfalls & Ferntree beneath Mt Wellington, Hobart c 1867 – 1874
Lower Glaslyn, Silver, Wellington Falls, Fern Tree Gully & Fern Tree Bower.
By Henry Hall Baily (active Hobart 1865 -1897).
Albumen paper prints from a full size wet collodion plate 185mm x 235mm with photographers stamp verso. Excellent condition,(ie not glued down on board & unfaded). The set encompassing themes of fern mania, the ‘sublime’ of waterfalls & emergent Tasmanian photographic tradition of wilderness exploration. Conservation mounted on ragboard in Tasoak gallery frames..
Price inc GST $950ea
Henry Hall Baily was born in Tasmania & went to England in 1861, returning to Tasmania in the mid 1860s, studying at the London School of photography. A professional photographer, he exhibited in both Melbourne and Sydney while continuing to have a practice in Hobart.
Son of John Richard Baily, steward to Bishop Francis Russell Nixon .
McPhail’s Directory of Tasmania for 1867-68 stated: ‘H.H. Baily, (From the London School of Photography) vignettes, Cartes de Visite, and Miniature Portraits taken for Brooches, Lockets, &c., also Oil Paintings copied. Specimens always on hand.’ In 1866 Baily exhibited ‘Album Portraits’ at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. He published stereo-photographs of landscape subjects in 1867 from his studio at 94 Liverpool Street, moving to 139 Elizabeth Street later that year. In 1874 some of his photographs were shown with the New South Wales Academy of Art; the Sydney Mail reported that his ‘pretty collection of photographs, depicting Tasmanian scenery, chiefly in the vicinity of Hobart Town, elicited some attention’. In the same year he advertised in Walch’s Tasmanian Almanac : ‘H.H. Baily… Prize Medallist Highest award for Album Portraits, Melbourne Exhibition 1866 1867. Enlargements, all sizes, finished in mezzotint, sepia or oil, with the greatest delicacy. A large selection of views of Tasmania from all parts of the Island.’ Baily advertised both photographic and oil portraits throughout the 1870s.