Brees, Harold

BREES, Harold (c1838–1904), architect, artist and author, was born in Holborn, London, eldest son of Samuel Charles Brees (1810–1865), civil engineer, architect, artist and author of well-regarded civil engineering and architecture texts, and Ann Taylor Jones. Brees jnr travelled with them to Wellington in 1842 when Samuel Brees was contracted as principal surveyor and engineer to the New Zealand Company. The family returned to London in 1845 where Harold was listed as a scholar in 1851. He may have remained and trained there when Samuel returned to Australasia and enroute to Sydney was briefly appointed Acting-Engineer to the Victorian Government in 1852-53. In 1858 Harold joined him in Sydney where Samuel was licensed in February 1859 as a surveyor by the NSW Surveyor-General and appointed a drawing master at Sydney Grammar School. They worked together as architects in the 1860s, their work including large commercial premises in 1864 for AJ Ashburn. Harold was an unsuccessful applicant for the post of Town Surveyor at Ipswich in 1862 and stayed in Australia in 1865 when Samuel returned to London where he died on arrival. Thereafter Harold was intermittently listed as an architect in Sydney where he was in partnership as Brees & Pearcé in 1885-86. He also travelled, including visiting Rockhampton, later exhibiting a pencil sketch of the town in 1869. During the 1870s he regularly exhibited his paintings in Sydney and from August 1879 was a casual employee in the NSW Works Department including as a surveyor and draftsman in the Sewerage Department from September 1889 but by 1894 was employed casually at 8/- a day. He later advised the Queensland Government on sewerage works and was in Brisbane in 1898, but by 1900 had returned to Sydney where he died.