Collection SC131 - Richard Roskell Bayne collection

735 pencil drawings and water colour sketches

The collection consists of 735 items, the majority of which are drawings and watercolours produced by Bayne on a European sketching tour in 1864-65 made possible by the Soane Medal award in 1864. Bayne spent four months in France (August-December 1864), sketching Romanesque and Gothic churches at Amiens, Soissons, Noyon, Angers, Toulouse, and along the Loire. Bayne travelled to Spain where he spent three months (Jan. - March 1865) documenting sites in the Pyrenees he believed would soon be lost to warfare and neglect, recording stained glass windows and other architectural details of Gothic and Romanesque structures, and visiting sites with important Moorish architecture. Bayne's Spanish work is the most comprehensive of the collection. He also made careful notations on his drawings and sketches with a complete numbering system, identification of the city, structure and facade, and the date of the work. From Spain, Bayne travelled to Naples where he spent about a week in Sicily. He went on to Greece and Turkey for a month (April - early May 1864), apparently going from Athens to Salonica and south to Constantinople. Many of the drawings are missing from this series, but show his interest in Byzantine churches and Islamic architecture in Greece and Turkey. He returned to Naples for a four month tour of Italy (May - August 1864). The collection includes a few drawings from Pompeii, panoramic views of Rome, architectural drawings of Renaissance and Medieval structures from Rome, Venice, Milan, Florence, Pisa, and Assisi, and sketches of architectural details such as stained glass in Assisi and the Baptistery doors in Florence. In September, 1864, Bayne was in Germany, but only a few of these drawings remain. The information about them is limited as they are dated or numbered, but the sites are not recorded on most. After Bayne accepted a position with the East India Railway Company in 1866, he moved to Calcutta, India. Part of the collection includes sketches he made on tours in India, and illustrates Muslim and Hindu structures in Benares, Delhi, Allahabad, Madras, Ahmadabad, Bombay, Brindabun, Chitor, Moorabad, and Calcutta. At least four structures in India are attributed to Bayne: the East India Railway offices (1881-84), the Huseinabad Clock Tower at Lucknow (1881-85), the Mayo Memorial Hall at Allahabad (1879), and the Thornhill and Mayne Memorial Library at Allahabad (1878). The presentation drawing for the latter structure is included in the collection as a donation from the Port Alberni Historical Society. The other items in the collection include a photograph of Bayne, several covers of his original European notebooks, and two certificates, one of which commemorates his achievement in passing the Voluntary Architectural Examination in 1864 with distinction, and the second certifying his election as an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects.