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. Nevertheless, when O'Brien's wife died in 1879, leaving him with five daughters to raise, he embarked on a career as a professional artist. He was versatile and energetic travelling around southern New Zealand, but also a heavy drinker and immensely fat. 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. He spent a year in Auckland in 1887 but returned to Dunedin where he died on 30 August 1888. His landlady inherited his residual collection and he was interred in a then unmarked grave in the northern cemetery. Legacy Since his death O'Brien's reputation has improved. 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. The late 20th century saw a number of exhibitions toured around the country and new studies of his work. In 1945, the Hocken Library held an exhibition of drawings and paintings by O'Brien and Lily Daff. 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'. His 'Designs of R.A.Lawson', now in the Otago Settlers Museum Dunedin, is often reproduced and his 'Dunedin from the Junction' 1869, in the same repository, is well known. His 'Water of Leith Brewery' of about 1865 (also in the Otago Settlers Museum) is an excellent example of his urban vision while 'Lawyer's Head from Forbury Head...' of 1870, in the collection of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery represents his pure landscape work somewhere near its best. He is represented in the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, the National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne, and in all the major New Zealand public collections, but most notably in the Otago Settlers Museum and the Hocken Collections, Dunedin. References Brown, G.H. & Keith, H. (1969 & 1988) An Introduction to New Zealand Painting 1839–1980 Auckland, NZ: David Bateman . Collins,