Oswald Walters Brierly
Encyclopedia
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England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
marine
Ocean
An ocean is a major body of saline water, and a principal component of the hydrosphere. Approximately 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean, a continuous body of water that is customarily divided into several principal oceans and smaller seas.More than half of this area is over 3,000...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, who came of an old Cheshire
Cheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...
family, was born at Chester
Chester
Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...
.
Life
Brierly entered Sass's art-school in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, and after studying naval architecture at Plymouth
Plymouth
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
he exhibited some drawings of ships at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
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
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
and Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
museums.
He had a passion for the sea, and in 1841 started round the world with Benjamin Boyd
Benjamin Boyd
Benjamin Boyd was a Scottish-born Australian pioneer and entrepreneur.Boyd was a man of "an imposing personal appearance, fluent oratory, aristocratic connexions, and a fair share of commercial acuteness". Mrs Georgiana McCrae, with whom he had dinner when he first came to Port Phillip, looked at...
(1796-1851), afterwards well known as a great Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n squatter, in the latter's ship Wanderer, and having got to New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
, made his home at Boyd's private whaling and trading village of Boyd Town in Twofold Bay
Twofold Bay
Twofold Bay is a bay on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia, close to the border with Victoria. The bay has an area of about 30 square kilometres. Close to North Head is a conspicuous islet, Mewstone Rock. About five km south of the islet is Red Point which forms the southern headland of...
on the New South Wales coast for ten years. He managed Boyd's whaling
Whaling
Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...
operations. Brierly Point is called after him. Increasingly disgruntled with his treatment by Boyd, he left New South Wales, joining voyages on HMS Rattlesnake
HMS Rattlesnake (1822)
HMS Rattlesnake was an Atholl-class 28-gun sixth-rate corvette of the Royal Navy launched in 1822. She made a historic voyage of discovery to the Cape York and Torres Strait areas of northern Australia.-Construction:...
in 1848, and with Sir Henry Keppel
Henry Keppel
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry Keppel, GCB, OM was a British admiral, son of the 4th Earl of Albemarle and of his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Lord de Clifford.-Naval career:...
on the Meander in 1850; he returned to England in 1851 on this ship, and illustrated Keppel's book about his cruise (1853).
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
broke out in 1854, Keppel gave Brierly an observational post on his new steam line-of-battle ship, St Jean d'Acre
HMS St Jean d'Acre (1853)
HMS St Jean d'Acre was the Royal Navy's first 101 gun screw two-decker line-of-battle ship. She served in the Crimean War.The St Jean d'Acre was a Surveyor's Department design. The design was approved on 15 February 1851, and she was ordered the same day. Her keel was laid down at Devonport...
, 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
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
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
Edward VII of the United Kingdom
Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910...
led to royal patronage and several commissions. Brierly was attached to the suites of the Duke of Edinburgh
Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was the third Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and reigned from 1893 to 1900. He was also a member of the British Royal Family, the second son and fourth child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha...
and the Prince of Wales
Edward VII of the United Kingdom
Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910...
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
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
, but more largely at the Royal Watercolour Society
Royal Watercolour Society
The Royal Watercolour Society is an English institution of painters working in watercolours...
. 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
- European and American voyages of scientific explorationEuropean and American voyages of scientific explorationThe era of European and American voyages of scientific exploration followed the Age of Discovery and were inspired by a new confidence in science and reason that arose in the Age of Enlightenment...