As well as being an important interwar period architect, Hardy Wilson was an artist who produced many paintings and drawings which often featured buildings and imagined landscapes. His first architectural commission was Meryon, a Sydney house built for artist and critic Lionel Lindsay. His best known commission was Eryldene a house built for Professor E.G. Waterhouse, a linguist and trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW, in Gordon, Sydney.
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08/02/2025 Additional bio material from:
Hardy Wilson Exhibition Guided Tour, University of Sydney, Fisher Library, Level 2 (UG), Special Collection
Saturday, 15th February, 2025. https://www.library.sydney.edu.au/about/news/hardy-wilson-exhibition
“This exhibition marks the 100th anniversary of William Hardy Wilson’s influential book, considered by many to be the foundation of historical scholarship on architecture in Australia.
Published in 1924, Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania was the first major publication dedicated to documenting and conserving Australian buildings.
Hardy Wilson was born at Campbelltown in 1881, great grandson of early NSW colonist Caleb Wilson. He attended Newington College, where he captained the First XV Rugby team and was awarded the School Drawing Prize. He went on to study at the Sydney Technical College.
After early work with architects Kent & Budden, in 1905 Wilson embarked on a long period abroad, developing his artistic technique. He travelled extensively in Italy and the United States, returning to Sydney in 1910, primed to embark on his architectural career. Wilson completed a string of houses in Sydney in coming years, including Merion for artist Lionel Lindsay, in Wahroonga (1911); Eryldene Gordon for linguist, literary scholar and camellia enthusiast Prof. E.B. Waterhouse (1913: with famed garden); and his own house, Purulia, Wahroonga (1916).
In 1912, Wilson began a decade-long project recording Australia’s early colonial architecture, culminating in 1924’s Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania. Precursors were a 1919 Anthony Hordern’s department store exhibition of his drawings, 1920 publication of The Old Cow Pasture Road, with some work in it. A 1921 trip to Asia (China via Borneo and the Philippines) was influential. In 1923 the Victoria & Albert Museum in London exhibited a selection of drawings from his project. He had hoped for a London publisher, not to be.”
- Writers:
-
Michael Bogle
- Date written:
- 2009
- Last updated:
- 2025
