Anthony Myles Adams Reilly

Biography

The artist and mountaineer Anthony Myles Adams Reilly was born in 1836 and the only surviving son of William Adams Reilly of Belmont House Co Westmeath and Roebuck in Dublin and Frances Helen nee Auchmunty. Reilly’s father died in 1848 when Reilly was 12 years of age. He was sent to boarding school at Rugby College in England and it was here he developed his skills of sketching and drawing. From Rugby he went to Brasenose College in Oxford, before studying at the Inner Temple in London, but never was called to the bar. While at Brasenose College he joined up to their mountaineering club. He went to reside in London and returned to Ireland to live in Goodbrook in Delgany in 1881. He died in 1885 at the Macken’s Hotel, Dublin of a stoke and was described as late of Goodebrooke, Delgany, he was only aged 49.

The Mountaineer

Reilly was a noted artist and mountaineer and an original member of the Alpine Club, whose great project was his work in mapping Mont Blanc, the first correct map of the chain of Mont Blanc. This map was published in 1865 by the Alpine Club. While mapping the Mount Blanc, Adams along with Whymper and Michel Croz made the first ascents of the Mont Dolent, the Aiguille de Trelatete and the first passage of the Col de Triolet. Along with John Birkbeck, Croz and Payot, Adams crossed the Dome du Goute from the Col de Miage, thus for the first time proving the feasibility of the ascent of Mont Blanc from the side of the Miage Glacier. In 1868, he published the first reliable map of the Mont Rosa region

In 1908 Coolidge’s book The Alps in Nature and History, Adams maps are described as, “whose admirable maps of that chain (Mont Blanc) (1865) and of the Southern Valleys of Mona Rosa (1868) are most remarkable, viewed as achievements of a single amateur, for as far as topography goes, they bear well an comparison with the work of the great Government Surveyors”. Adams was the Author of The chain of Mont Blanc, from an actual survey in 1863-4 , Longman & Co., (1865), The Valpeline, the Valtournanche and the Southern valleys of the Chain of Monte Rosa, from an actual survey made in 1865-66 , 1868 and Forbes’s Life and Letters , with John Campbell Shairp and P G Tait 1873.

Bibliography

Nugent, Frank; In search of peaks, passes & glaciers : Irish Alpine pioneers, Doughcloyne, Wilton, Cork (2013)

Unsworth, Savage snows : the story of Mont Blanc, Walt; London : Hodder & Stoughton (1986)