Edwin Butler Bayliss was born at Tettenhall, Wolverhampton in 1874. His parents were Samuel Bayliss and Emma Butler. He was the eldest of eight children born to Samuel and Emily Bayliss. (The family are believed to be related to the painter Sir Wyke Bayliss). Samuel was chairman of the firm of ironfounders, Bayliss, Jones and Bayliss. A nut and bolt manufacturer, he was a successful business man, eventually setting up an independent works at Brierley Hill in association with the Leppington family. Edwin spent his childhood in Finchfield and Tettenhall. At the age of 14 he was sent to Rydal Mount School (now Rydal Penrhos School), a boarding school in Pwllycrochan Avenue, Colwyn Bay, Wales. A newly-established Methodist school, it was seen as an ideal choice, the family being long associated with that 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 is reported to have said, ‘Physical weariness could make mental concentration well nigh impossible.’ At 18, Bayliss returned to the family home ‘The Woodhouse’ at Wood Road, in Tettenhall. It was a large household with eleven members of the family resident, a lady’s companion, a nurse a cook and three maids. The Woodhouse was one of Tettenhall’s largest houses and it is clear from that, and from the number of live-in servants, that the Butler family was rather well-off.  Iron-works and foundries had long been a part of his background, being the foundation of the family fortune and in due course, he joined the family firm. As the eldest son, he would be expected to have an understanding of all aspects of production, with a view, no doubt, to eventually taking over the company when his father stepped down. Bayliss’s abiding interest in art eventually got the better of him and at the age of 27, he left the firm, determined to strike out on his own as an artist. His father may have been disappointed by this development, but had a substantial studio built for him in the grounds of the family home. At that point, Bayliss began to teach himself the techniques of watercolour, oil painting, pastel and etching. Sir Alfred Hickman was a close family friend and Edwin was given a free run of his steel works in Bilston. Bayliss then set about depicting the blast furnaces and smouldering slag heaps of the Black Country’s industrial landscape with an almost obsessive enthusiasm. In Dickens’s novel The Old Curiosity Shop, written in 1841, describes how the area’s local factory chimneys ‘Poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air.’ His depictions of the industrial scene did nothing to prettify the view and it is likely that his paintings accurately capture the atmosphere of the area. 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 the 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. Bayliss worked in oils and in aquatint, but we know nothing of his sculpture, as none has survived.  He was a member of several Midland societies and had solo exhibitions at the Ruskin Galleries, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, the Longsdale Chambers, Wolverhampton and was an exhibitor at the Royal Academy in London over a period of 26 years. In 1901 he exhibited several pictures with the Wolverhampton Art Circle. 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 Bayliss’s use of pallet knife, structural emphasis, unity of tone and atmosphere. In 1904 Bayliss had work exhibited at the Birmingham Society of Artists. His powerful works led one reviewer in 1911 to describe him as ‘the poet-painter of the industrial scarred country around Wolverhampton with its smoke charred atmosphere.’ Bayliss died in 1950. A considerable body of his work may be found in the collection of Wolverhampton Art Gallery, but is seldom on display.