Mr. Gilbert Bayes, who died yesterday in London at the age of 81, was a decorative sculptor with a keen sense of the relationship between sculpture and architecture.

 

A son of A. W. Bayes, painter and etcher, he was born in 1872. Entering the Royal Academy Schools in 1896, he won the gold medal and travelling scholarship for sculpture three years later. He gained an honourable mention in the Paris International Exhibition of 1900. Most of his earlier work was in the form of reliefs and statuettes and he had success as a designer of medals and seals. Examples are the Great Seal of King George V; the King's Police Medal; and the gold medals given by the Royal Geographical Society to Captain Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton.

 

Early in demand by architects, for the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, Bayes did the groups representing the prehistoric and classic periods, and for the Victoria and Albert Museum the figures of Sir Charles Barry and Sir William Chambers. He was, however, more characteristic in lighter vein, particularly in carved reliefs, which lent themselves to play of line and allowed him to indulge his illustrative bent. A happy example is the frieze representing "The Drama Through the Ages" on the Saville Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, for which in 1931 he was awarded the silver medal of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.

 

Other works by Bayes that should be mentioned are the John the Baptist Fountain for the Merchant Taylors' Company; the memorial lectern in bronze enamel, and mosaic in the Savoy Chapel; and the memorial to Constant Coquelin for the Comedie Francaise. He did a few portrait busts and reliefs, including one of Professor Sidgwick at Cambridge, and a great deal of decorative work. For his work at the Paris Exhibition of Decorative Art in 1925 he was awarded a gold medal and a diploma of honour. In 1938 Bayes was elected president of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, and he was an honorary member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, and frequently showed statuettes at its exhibitions. He is represented in the Tate Gallery by a bronze equestrian statuette of "Sigurd," the hero of William Morris's epic poem "The Story of Sigurd the Volsung," a Chantrey purchase of 1910; and at Preston, Liverpool, and Dunedin.

 

He married Miss Gertrude Smith, and had one son and one daughter.

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11 July 1953