Sir Oswald Walters Brierly (British, 1817-1894)


A trading schooner overhauling a first rate off Garrison Point, Sheerness oil on canvas81.5 x 122cm (32 1/16 x 48 1/16in).
|ProvenanceWith Frost and Reed, London, no. 6312.With Poulsen Galleries, Pasadena.Anon. sale, Bonhams, London, 15 August 2002, lot 395.Purchased from the above sale by the present owner.Born in Chester in 1817, Brierly became one of the most travelled of professional painters. In 1841, he sailed for Sydney in the yacht Wanderer and settled for a time in Auckland, New Zealand. In 1848 the the Royal Naval surveyor Captain Owen Stanley offered to take him in H.M.S. Rattlesnake on a survey of the north and east coasts of Australia, and he went on two voyages, keeping a valuable record with his drawings. In 1850 Captain the Hon. Harry Keppel invited Brierly aboard H.M.S. Meander, which cruised in the Pacific and off the west coast of South America, before returning to England via the Straits of Magellan in July 1851. In 1854 Keppel was to accompany the Baltic fleet and asked Brierly to come with him and in 1855 he again accompanied Keppel, this time to the Black Sea for the final operations of the war. The Duke of Edinburgh asked Brierly to accompany him on a voyage around the world, which lasted from February 1867 to June 1868 and later on that year Brierly accompanied the Prince and Princess of Wales on a tour of the Nile and the Black Sea. Brierly exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1839 and 1872 and, following the death of John Christian Schetky in 1874, became Marine Painter in Ordinary to the Queen. In 1881 he became Curator of the Painted Hall and Greenwich Hospital collections and was knighted in 1885. Brierly's oil paintings are rare and his main contributions were the watercolours from which so many lithographs were made.