Oswald Walters Brierly

HMS Rattlesnake, painted 1853.

Sir Oswald Walters Brierly (1817 - December 14, 1894), English marine painter, who came of an old Cheshire family, was born at Chester.

Life

Brierly entered Sass's art-school in London, and after studying naval architecture at Plymouth he exhibited some drawings of ships at the Royal Academy in 1839. He was twice married and had an active and prosperous life, and was a well-respected artist; some of his best pictures are in Melbourne and Sydney museums.

He had a passion for the sea, and in 1841 started round the world with Benjamin Boyd (1796-1851), afterwards well known as a great Australian squatter, in the latter's ship Wanderer, and having got to New South Wales, made his home at Boyd's private whaling and trading village of Boyd Town in Twofold Bay on the New South Wales coast for ten years. He managed Boyd's whaling operations. Brierly Point is called after him. Increasingly disgruntled with his treatment by Boyd, he left New South Wales, joining voyages on HMS Rattlesnake in 1848, and with Sir Henry Keppel on the Meander in 1850; he returned to England in 1851 on this ship, and illustrated Keppel's book about his cruise (1853).

HMS Rattlesnake off Sydney Heads by Oswald Brierly c.1849

When the Crimean War broke out in 1854, Keppel gave Brierly an observational post on his new steam line-of-battle ship, St Jean d'Acre, in the Baltic Fleet. The Illustrated London News commissioned Brierly to sketch Allied naval operations. In 1855 the St Jean d'Acre went to the Black Sea, and Brierly went with her. Though Brierly did not stay with her; he worked on several ships in the Black Sea. In 1856 a series of lithographs of his sketches were published as Portfolio of Marine and Coastal Sketches by Mr. William Brierly. When Queen Victoria reviewed the fleet at Spithead at the end of the war, Brierly was on the royal yacht making sketches. This and Keppel's friendship with the Prince of Wales led to royal patronage and several commissions.^[1] Brierly was attached to the suites of the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales on their tours by sea, the results being seen in further marine pictures.

In 1874 Brierly was made Marine-Painter to the Queen. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, but more largely at the Royal Watercolour Society. His more important works included the historical pictures, The Retreat of the Spanish Armada (1871) and The Loss of the Revenge (1877). In 1885 he was knighted.

See also

Media related to Oswald Walters Brierly at Wikimedia Commons

• European and American voyages of scientific exploration

Footnotes

1. ^ Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online Edition

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

Persondata
Name	Brierly
Alternative names
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Date of birth	1817
Place of birth
Date of death	December 14, 1894
Place of death