HENRY RIELLY

Tenth Exhibition of the Victorian Academy of Arts, Melbourne, April 1880, cat. 63

Henry Rielly was born in 1858 or 1859 and exhibited at the Victorian Academy of Arts for many years (1870-95), the New South Wales Academy (1874-76) and the Queensland Art Society. He painted around Melbourne and north-east Victoria until at least 1888, influenced by Louis Buvelot’s intimate, atmospheric view of the pastoral landscape. In about 1892 he settled in Glen Aplin, near Stanthorpe, Queensland, with his two sisters who were also artists and whose tuberculosis may have necessitated the move. In 1904 Rielly moved due to illness to Brisbane and he sadly died in Brisbane Hospital in April 1905 at the age of only forty-seven. He is represented in the National Gallery of Victoria and other Australian public collections.

The Blue Mountain from Blackwood  depicts a notable beauty spot in the gold fields district of Victoria. Blue Mountain or, correctly, Blue Mount, is a steep volcanic peak about five miles north west of Blackwood township. Long Gully Creek rises from the Blue Mount, while Nuggetty Gully and Yankee Creek also join the Lerderderg River nearby. By 1880, when Rielly was there, the 1850s gold rush was over – although Chinese fossickers could still sometimes be seen trying to earn a scanty subsistence by re-working the bed of the river and its banks. The sawmilling industry was also in full production, satisfyling the needs of deep mines in the region and the insatiable demand for building materials in land-boom Melbourne. All this was to come crashing down in the '90s when the bubble burst. Blackwood had also become known for mineral spring water of high quality. Some of the land around the springs was officially reserved in 1879; and in 1888 the Victorian Secretary for Mines and Water Supply reported on the area’s potential as a tourist destination:

‘The great elevation of Blackwood above sea level, its comparative proximity to the metropolis of the colony, its rugged mountain scenery and crisp, bracing atmosphere, combine to render it one of our finest health resorts; and it only needs the preservation of this splendid mineral spring, and the improvement of its surroundings, to ensure for the locality a greater share of attention from invalids and tourists than hitherto received’.¹

At this date and as still today, Blue Mount was partly cultivated but remained heavily timbered with stringy-bark, messmate, peppermint and white gum. As noted in Bailliere’s Victorian Gazetteer and Road Guide of 1879, Rielly could have come from Melbourne by train as far as Keilor, then by mail coach via Bacchus Marsh arriving after lunch time; or on the last train to Kyneton, then mail coach via Trentham to arrive at four o’clock in the morning.² His viewpoint was a spot not far from the intersection of the main road through Blackwood and Terrill Street (although he took a little artistic licence in depicting the course of the Lerderderg River).

We are most grateful to David Endacott, Curator of the Daylesford and District Historical Society, for assistance in cataloguing this work.

1. Report by C. W. Langtree, Department of Mines and Water Supply, Melbourne, 12 March 1888; reprinted at ww.mineralwater.vic.gov.au/quicksite/project/pdf/Blackwood_MS64.PDF. About an acre was reserved in 1879; the Blackwood Mineral Springs Reserve today is around six ha.
2. Whitworth, R. P., Bailliere's Victorian Gazetteer and Road Guide, containing the Most Recent and Accurate Information as to every Place in the Colony, F. F. Bailliere, Melbourne, third edition, 1879, p. 60.