Baillie Gallery

The Baillie Gallery was during the end of the 19th and early years of the 20th Century one of the most popular exhibition spaces in the capital. Between 1891-95 he was a working member of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts and exhibited with them in 1891. He was also Secretary of the Wellington Art Club with whom he exhibited. It was founded by New Zealand-born John Denzil Baillie (1868-1926) who in 1896 sailed for England intent on studying art in London. He had returned to his home country within the year and still dissatisfied with the country of his birth sailed for England a second time. He tried his hand on the stage as an actor and indeed must have been reasonably successful as he performed for a season with the great Victorian Thespian Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. The Gallery appears to have opened circa 1900 firstly in Hereford Road Bayswater, west London and relocated in 1905 to 54 Baker Street and by 1909 had again relocated to 13 Bruton Street. I am estimating that it ceased to function by the commencement of World War I, although the publication 'The Year’s Art' did feature an advert for the gallery in 1916.

In addition to his activities as an art dealer, Baillie was also a painter and between 1898 and 1903 exhibited at his own gallery and at the Royal Society of British Artists in London. A brush drawing by him is illustrated in The Windmill January 1899. The artists who exhibited there included Frances Hodgkins, John Lavery, Reginald Frampton, Francis Boileau Cadell, Edward Gordon Craig, Walter Bayes, Anne Estelle Rice, Glyn Philpot, James Pryde and Robert Bevan who held his first solo exhibition there in 1905.