Galatea Preparing for Departure, Sydney April 1869
Pencil heightened with white and traces of watercolour
10.3 x 17.3 cm
Inscribed left on steam at 11.15
Oswald Brierly was an English marine painter who first visited Australia when he joined Ben Boyd on his yacht, The Wanderer, on a voyage to Australia in 1842. Brierly worked for Boyd managing his whaling business at Twofold Bay until 1848. He returned to England in 1850 as a guest of Henry Keppel on board the HMS Meander.
Brierly visited Australia again as a guest of the second son of Queen Victoria, the Duke of Edinburgh, who commanded the HMS Galatea during its trip around the world commencing in 1866. On the first royal tour of Australia, the Duke arrived in Adelaide in October 1867 and visited Melbourne, Tasmania and Sydney where an attempt was made on his life thus delaying his departure till June 1868. They returned to Australia for an informal visit in 1869, arriving in Fremantle in January and departing from Sydney in April. In September 1870 the Duke made a final visit to Sydney to dock the Galatea and departed in early 1871
In 1874 Brierly was appointed the official marine painter to Queen Victoria who knighted him in 1885
Item #77
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