Who was the architect of the old parts of the Art Gallery and when were these parts built?

The classically elegant Art Gallery of New South Wales is one of Sydney's most distinctive landmarks. The façade and old wing of the Gallery were built between 1896 and 1909. Architecturally, Sydney's Art Gallery reflects nineteenth century ideas about the cultural role of a gallery as a temple to art and civilising values. Yet early designs for the gallery were less confident about the institution's role and image. The present building is the work of Government Architect Walter Liberty Vernon, who secured the prestigious commission over the less conventional architect Horbury Hunt. Hunt had originally been employed by the Gallery when it was decided to move from a temporary wooden structure in the Botanic Gardens to the present site. He erected a building which was nothing more than a series of thick walls with a saw-tooth roof, planned to be the foundation of a more substantial building when funds became available. After ten years of design and funding disputes, Hunt was finally denied the opportunity of completing the gallery. His rejected designs are wildly varied. Stylistic eclecticism characterised much of Hunt's work. It exposed him to severe criticism, but also allowed genuine innovation and creativity. His rejected designs for the Art Gallery of New South Wales include a heavy Gothic structure with a blind arcade of pointed arches winding around the building, even a Byzantine/Islamic hybrid with Moorish arches and a series of domes. Some might agree with Hunt's biographer that he would have provided Sydney with one of its 'finest as well as most hilarious buildings' had he been given the opportunity. Hunt's designs, however, were rejected in favour of Vernon's present chaste, classical building.

When Vernon's building was officially completed in February 1909, the press was full of praise. It was felt that the city at last had a public gallery worthy of Australia's Mother Colony and one which, as an added bonus, rivalled Melbourne's multi-purpose Museum, Library and Gallery. It was also viewed as a happy coincidence that the completion of the Sydney gallery coincided with the opening of Sir Aston Webb's grand additions to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Comparisons didn't go much further. Webb's rather strange pastiche of Renaissance styles, with pavilion domes, campaniles and a column-tiered tower is far removed from Walter Liberty Vernon's low-lying, simple classic gallery. Yet if Vernon had been left entirely to himself to design the Sydney gallery, we may have had a building more akin to Webb's museum than the present structure.

Vernon's first design for the gallery included a dome, along with turrets and pinnacles. He was not an entirely conventional architect, as buildings like the Jacobean-style Challis House on Martin Place testify. Neither was he convinced of the superiority of a classic architectural vocabulary for public buildings. Indeed, throughout his career he tended to favour an adapted Gothic style, believing it admitted greater individuality and richness 'not obtainable in the colder and unbending lines of Pagan Classic.' In many ways, the Art Gallery of New South Wales is a departure from the style he was pursuing in the 1890s. He had abandoned the grand classical manner of his predecessor as Government Architect James Barnet, erecting more modest buildings in brick with stone dressing, incorporating Gothic and many other decorative elements. When one compares the Art Gallery of New South Wales with the former Premier's Office on Macquarie Street [1896], the Tudoresque Land Titles Office [1908] or the elaborate Perpendicular MacLaurin Hall at Sydney University [1902-9], it appears uncharacteristically chaste.

Yet this is precisely what the Sydney Trustees wanted. It was not a building like the Victoria and Albert Museum which they had in mind as a model for New South Wales. Eccleston du Faur, President of the Board, admired William Playfair's gallery in Edinburgh. This was a low-lying edifice, which he felt would also be appropriate in the parkland setting of Sydney's Domain. The western and eastern elevation of the gallery consisted of two long unadorned wings, broken in the centre by an Ionic portico. Elegance without ostentation seemed to be its keynote. He recommended the design to Vernon in the mid 1890s when the Trustees commissioned him to draw up plans.

Vernon would have been foolish not to take notice of du Faur's recommendations. After all, he was not the first architect to be entrusted with the design of the gallery. Since 1885 the national art collection had been housed in a brick building of six rooms designed by John Horbury Hunt, an architect in private practice. Economic depression and lack of co-operation from the state government meant that this building, erected as an expedient, had remained standing without further additions or adornments for ten years. It was universally disliked, denounced in the press as the 'Art Barn.' Hunt was derided for its uncouth appearance. Parts of it, however, remained in use for over eighty years. When it came to be pulled down in the late 1960s, the workmen entrusted with the task spoke respectfully of its sturdy construction and fine brick work. These days Horbury Hunt has attracted a dedicated group of admirers, both within the architectural profession and among the general public. Some lament the fact that the Art Gallery of New South Wales was not entrusted to him in the end. Certainly his four, very diverse designs for the gallery, preserved in the Art Gallery Archive, display tremendous imagination, and even humour. Architecturally, Walter Vernon, a man of military stamp consumed by an equal passion for soldiering and architecture, was decidedly more dour.

Yet Vernon was the easier man with whom to work. He performed to deadlines and provided the Trustees with the kind of gallery they desired. The completed building evolved in only a few details from his earliest designs, so well did he understand and cater to the Trustees' demands. One revision was the portico. According to 1896 drawings, it was to involve paired Corinthian columns, half-fluted, standing on blocklike piers. It was an arrangement reminiscent of Sidney Smith's Tate Gallery, designs for which had featured prominently in the 1894 Art Journal. In 1900, however, an alternative, considerably simplified portico was designed by Vernon, in which six single Ionic columns stand without piers at the top of the stairs. These echo a smaller system of columns, symmetrically placed at the end of each wing on either side of the façade. This was a more balanced arrangement and was appropriately adopted.

To say that Vernon catered to the Trustees' demands for a classic temple to art is not to deny the building its genuine success. To some extent the design was sui generis, created in response to both the desires of the Trustees and the demands of the site, rather than a mere quoting from antique prototypes. Its proportions, simplicity and small individuating touches have endeared it to the city. Yet it must be acknowledged that the building's lack of ornament was not entirely Vernon's intent. Watercolour sketches show provision for roofline decoration such as acroteria supporting statuary and ornaments. A memorandum to the Trustees discusses the commissioning of a high relief sculptural group in bronze to decorate the tympanum. Also only four of the twelve façade panels have been filled with bronze reliefs. Financial stringency, above all, was the reason for the building's ornamental austerity.

Vernon's building as it now stands, and which is familiar to visitors as the 'original' or 'old' Gallery was built in five stages. The right wing of the façade looking towards the portico, with the Sir James Fairfax Galleries and Court 8 behind, was built between 1896 and 1897. The Fairfax Galleries consist of two simple rooms with a small square chamber at the northern end. The ceiling here is lower than elsewhere in Vernon's building. No doubt this was designed so that the raised light vents, about which the Trustees expended much thought and consulted widely, would not be viewed from the street over the gallery's low parapet. Provision for air conditioning in more recent years has not been so sympathetically planned. Court 8 is divided into three internal spaces with an architectural scheme a little more ornamented by reason of pairs of Ionic columns and a beautifully detailed ceiling. These two courts are distinguished from later ones by their lighter wooden floors. After their official opening on 24 May 1897 work began immediately on two adjacent picture galleries.

Courts 9 and 10 were opened in 1899. Court 9 is the greatest unbroken exhibiting space in the gallery. It was planned for the display of large pictures, a number of which had already been acquired in the gallery's twenty five years of collecting. Today it is used for the display of 19^th and early 20^th century Australian art as well as for a wide range of cultural events, including recitals, concerts and performances. Court 10 is a replica of Court 8. The entire southern elevation of the gallery was completed in 1901 with the opening of a long picture gallery behind the four completed courts. This gallery has an atmosphere quite distinct from the earlier ones owing to the small domed rooms at each end, its ornate ceiling and elaborate decorative consoles supporting the cornice. Externally, however, it could be argued that the southern elevation of the building is weak. At its centre is a shallow recessed colonnade which is not entirely successful as a central panel giving interest and proportion to the wing. Also Vernon's use of an ornamental Italianate balustrade between the columns seems superfluous and an unattractive addition to the whole arrangement.

On 24 March 1902 the final stone of the pediment above the entrance portico was laid. The portico is hexastyle in design, with six Grecian Ionic columns supporting a pediment, the tympanum of which was left rough for future carving or decoration. The two end columns are coupled with similar columns behind them. The back portion of the portico encloses a lobby, used then and today as a coat check. This leads into a grand oval vestibule, considered to be Vernon's masterpiece. Its intimate proportions, detailing and use of marble and mosaic give it a sumptuous tone. It consists of two internal bays with apsidal ends. The two central bays are designed with coupled Ionic columns carrying arches which support domes, the central portion of which is glazed to provide lighting to the space. The apsidal ends have a colonnade of similar columns, between which are ornamental niches for statues and which support richly coffered semi-domes. The whole vestibule is of rubbed stone, with column shafts of polished Kempsey marble.

Although facade and vestibule were completed in 1902, they were not made available to the public until the floor of the Main Hall was raised to the level of the new entrance. This took over four years to be achieved and generated a stream of acrimonious correspondence to the press about the spending of public monies on projects closed to public use. While this was being done, a basement gallery was opened on 31 October 1904, intended for the display of applied arts and for the gallery's collection of plaster casts and replicas. Today its staircase of Rockley, Fernbrook, Borenore and Molong marble makes an impressive entrance to the Art Gallery Research Library and Archive.

On 20 February 1909 the entire façade of the gallery was completed. A circular loggia at the end of the north-west wing differentiated it slightly from the one completed in 1897. As a concluding flourish, names of painters, sculptors and architects were lettered in bronze below the entablature of the building. Forty-four names were intended, thirty-two are to be found on the existing elevation. Painters' names appear on the southern half of the front elevation and on the adjoining side elevation to the south. Sculptors appear on the northern half of the front and were intended for the adjoining side elevation. Architects appear on the rear elevation. It was a peculiar selection of artists, partly representing Victorian tastes and partly the idiosyncratic choice of Eccleston du Faur. It has been suggested that these names be removed, as they bear no relation to the collections housed within. However they are a continual, albeit quaint, reminder of the gallery's founders, their vision and aspirations.

Barry Pearce, Senior Curator of Australian Art, captured this when he wrote "when completed just short of a century ago, the Gallery's classic façade displayed beneath its cornice illustrious names of European artists and architects who were to be, presumably, signifiers of an ideal. In the event, few of these names came to be represented within. However, the building itself retains an evocation of something that is, if not more precious, unique. It has become a generous home to its local artists, and a window to its city; a small Parthenon to its own aesthetic world. One may stand at the entrance before a sweep of gold-brown sandstone, look north towards the harbour at any day of any season, and feel the sensation of a physically appealing place that has been loved and wrestled with by so many skilled and creative talents : Martens, Streeton, Roberts, Cossington Smith, Wakelin, Preston, Rees, Dobell, Drysdale, Passmore, Klippel, Olsen, Whiteley amongst a multitude. Their impressions and expressions have permeated the Gallery over a century and a quarter and formed its heart."

(Research by Steven Miller, Archivist)