Sir Oswald Brierly (1817–1894), marine painter and adventurer, studied art, naval architecture and navigation in England before his fascination with seafaring caused him to sign up as staff artist on the Wanderer – a schooner owned by entrepreneur Benjamin Boyd, who was about to embark on a round-the-world trip. After the voyage ended in Sydney in July 1842, Brierly went south to Eden where he was employed as the manager of Boyd’s Twofold Bay whaling enterprise for several years. By 1848, Boyd was facing bankruptcy, leading Brierly to accept Owen Stanley’s offer of a place aboard HMS Rattlesnake in two surveying voyages that were to take in the Barrier Reef, New Guinea and the Louisiade archipelago. After Stanley’s death in 1850, Brierly transferred to HMS Maeander, commanded by Henry Keppel, which sailed from New Zealand in June 1850 and visited Tonga, Tahiti, and the coasts of Peru, Chile and Mexico on its route home to England. Brierly was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, publishing his account of the Maeander voyage in the Society’s journal in 1852. During the Crimean War, he served under Keppel as an artist-observer, seeing action amidst various naval skirmishes in the Black Sea. During this time, he was also under contract to supply views of naval operations to the Illustrated London News, making him possibly the first war artist commissioned by a newspaper. After the war, he began to enjoy the patronage of Queen Victoria (some 150 of Brierly’s works were ultimately acquired for the Royal collection) and later sailed alongside Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, on various voyages, including that of the Galatea – the vessel which conducted the Duke on his world tour of 1867–1868. Brierly contributed the illustrations for the official account of the Galatea’s voyage (published in 1869); later, he was appointed marine painter to the Queen and the Royal Yacht Squadron. He was knighted in 1885. A contributor to the exhibitions of the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours, in later years Brierly travelled in Italy and was the curator of the Painted Hall at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich has the most substantial collection of his works; in Australia, he is represented in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Library, and the Mitchell Library, which also holds some of his journals and sketchbooks.
