Oswald Walters Brierly

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

He was again with Keppel during the Crimean War, and published in 1855 a series of lithographs illustrating the English and French fleets in the Baltic. He was now taken up by Queen Victoria and other members of the royal family, and 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 by him; and in 1874 he was made marine-painter to the Queen. He exhibited at the Academy, but more largely at the Royal Watercolour Society, his more important works including the historical pictures, The Retreat of the Spanish Armada (1871) and The Loss of the Revenge (1877).

In 1885 he was knighted. He was twice married and had an active and prosperous life, and was a well respected artist; his best pictures are at Melbourne and Sydney.