A temple to art, 1896–1909

It took 11 years before construction began on a fine sandstone building to encase Hunt’s unadorned ‘art barn’. This was erected to designs by government architect Walter Liberty Vernon, who had replaced James Barnet in 1890. Vernon was under instruction to make his building ‘as strictly classical as possible’. Architectural inspiration, according to the National Art Gallery of NSW trustees, should be taken from William Playfair’s National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. Opened to the public in 1859, this building was an elegant, low-lying neoclassical structure of the Ionic order that sat sympathetically within its semi-parkland setting.

Vernon’s designs were approved on 2 December 1895 and building works commenced on 13 April 1896. The right wing of the facade, looking towards the portico, with the James Fairfax Galleries and Court 8 behind, was built between 1896 and 1897. The Fairfax Galleries (Court 7) consist of two simple rooms with a small square chamber at the northern end (Court 6). Court 8 is divided into three internal spaces by arches sitting on pairs of Ionic columns. These galleries were opened on 24 May 1897.

Construction then began immediately on Court 9, the largest unbroken exhibiting space in the suite of galleries, and Court 10, a replica of Court 8. By 1900, the International Art Notes reported ‘one wing of the building, about one fourth of the whole structure, is at present completed, and gives rich promise of future beauty … The interior is divided into four halls, each 100 feet by 30 feet, communicating with each other by pillared archways. The lighting is almost perfect, designs for the roof having been furnished by London correspondents after careful study of all the latest improvements in European galleries’.

The entire southern elevation of the gallery was completed in 1901 with the opening of a long picture gallery (Court 12), with two domed sculpture galleries at each end (Courts 11 and 13). On 24 March 1902 the keystone of the pediment above the entrance portico was laid. The portico was modified from Vernon’s 1896 design, which involved paired Corinthian columns, half-fluted, standing on blocklike piers. It was an arrangement reminiscent of Sidney Smith’s Tate Gallery in London, designs for which had featured prominently in the 1894 Art Journal. The portico built was hexastyle, with six Ionic columns supporting a pediment, the tympanum of which was left rough for decoration. The two end columns were coupled with similar columns behind them.

Vernon’s entrance vestibule was his masterpiece. Its two central bays were designed with coupled Ionic columns carrying arches supporting semi-glazed domes. The apsidal ends, with richly coffered semi-domes, included ornamental niches for statues between a colonnade of Ionic columns with 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.

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. It was reached by a fine staircase of Rockley, Fernbrook, Borenore and Molong marbles, all quarried in New South Wales. On 20 February 1909 the entire facade 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.