George O'Brien (painter)

George O'Brien (1821–1888) was an engineer of aristocratic background who turned to art in 19th century Australasia, dying in poverty but leaving a body of remarkable work.

By December 1863 O'Brien was living at Duncan Street in Dunedin New Zealand no doubt attracted by the prosperity induced by the Otago gold rushes.

He worked as a civil engineer; was employed at times by the Town Board and supplied architectural perspectives of buildings designed by several Dunedin firms.

His paintings were ill-received by one critic, probably Thomas Bracken, which represents the arrival in New Zealand of the new taste for Turneresque Romantic landscape and the beginning of the demise of O'Brien's more old-fashioned neo-classicism.

His habits were bohemian and eventually his oldest daughter, now married, removed her younger siblings while O'Brien continued lodging with a sailor and his wife in a poor part of the city.

Hailed by people like Rodney Kennedy and Colin McCahon as a topographer untouched by artistic fashion he is not that but a highly able neo-classical painter with a most unusual urban vision.

John Harris of the Otago University Library wrote in the catalogue that O'Brien's 'combination of skilled draughtsmanship and genuine feeling for the pattern and colour of our hills and bush and harbour give [his works] historical as well as artistic significance'.