GULLY, JOHN (1819-88) was born at Bath, of a family to which also belonged the prize fighter John Gully (1783-1863) and Sir William Court Gully, Q.C., Speaker of the House of Commons. Apprenticed to an iron founder, his taste for drawing led to his being transferred from the workshop to the drawing and designing department. He left at the end of his articles and joined the Savings Bank at Bath, and a little later his father's business in the city. While acting as accountant he took lessons in landscape painting. In his early twenties he married Jane Eyles, the widow of Joseph Moore, of Portsea.

Attracted by Hursthouse's book on New Zealand, Gully in 1852 sailed in the John Phillips with his wife and family, and took up land at Omata, Taranaki. He soon abandoned his attempt at farming in favour of clerical work in New Plymouth. In the Taranaki war he served with the volunteers, but, his health being unequal to the strain and exposure, he moved to Nelson and got employment as drawing master at the College. In 1863 he was appointed draughtsman and surveyor in the provincial service, under J. C. Richmond. He left the Survey department about 1878 and devoted the whole of his time thereafter to painting. While visiting Westland with the Superintendent (J. P. Robinson) they were capsized on the Buller bar and Robinson was drowned. Gully visited Victoria sketching, and on his return, with J. C. Richmond, spent a day or two in Milford Sound in fine sketching weather.

Many of Gully's works were purchased for Australian and New Zealand galleries and private collections. He exhibited in 1871 in the Royal Academy and for many years at the Society of British Water Colour Artists. All of his pictures sent to the Indian and Colonial Exhibition in 1886 were sold. In 1877 Henry Wise and Co. published a portfolio containing chromo-lithographs of some of his better known pictures of New Zealand scenery, with descriptions by Von Haast. Gully died on 1 Nov 1888.

G. Lincoln Lee, John Gully (1932), with list of his works; The Colonist, 2 Nov 1888. Portrait: Taranaki Historical collection.

Reference: Volume 1, page 185

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