Painted plaster panel from Richmond Villa, Sydney, c1865 Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, Sydney Living Museums. L2015/2. H: 129 x W: 60 x D: 4cm.
- CSL&RC
Painted decoration from Richmond Villa
Richmond Villa is an early Australian colonial house standing in Kent Street, Sydney.
Since 1978 it has been the head office of the Society of Australian Genealogists. The house was originally located at the back of Macquarie Street, facing the Domain near the NSW Parliament. It was built in 1849-1851, designed by Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis (1796-1879) as a private residence for himself – but never occupied by Lewis who became insolvent in 1849.
From 1851 until 1893 the house was a family residence, first for resident owners and then under lease. In 1879 it was one of a number of privately-owned properties on the east side of Macquarie Street resumed under the Macquarie Street Land Resumption Act. The resumed land was intended for ‘the erection of Parliamentary buildings and other purposes’. From 1893 until 1975 the villa was used as an annex of Parliament House and known as Richmond House, initially providing accommodation for the Parliamentary Librarian and storage for part of the parliamentary library. It was later used to provide office and hostel accommodation for the Parliamentary Country Party. In 1975, when plans were developed for building additions to Parliament House, it was found impossible to retain Richmond Villa on its original site and a decision was made to relocate the building to a new site.
Richmond Villa was carefully recorded and every stone numbered prior to removal and work began on dismantling the building on 10 November 1975. This painted plaster panel was salvaged from the house during the process of dismantling, when it was exposed above a doorway in one of the principal rooms on the ground floor of the house.
Richmond Villa painted panel
The Richmond Villa painted panel was uncovered above the doorway leading from the dining room back to the entrance hall. The design is contained within a painted frame, suggesting that it may have been a single decorative panel, painted above the architrave of the door. Or it may have been one of the tailpieces of a frieze that extended across the internal wall of the dining room and wrapped the corners. When was it painted? Perhaps between 1853 and 1863 when the house was owned and occupied by Josiah Vincent Lavers and his family. Lavers was a cordial manufacturer. Another possibility is the decade from 1863 to 1872 when Richard Villa was owned by a widower named James Williams with several children. Williams was a former storekeeper and property owner. After his death in April 1872 the property was managed by his trustees and leased in 1876 to George Neville Griffiths, a stock and station agent and later a Member of the NSW Legislative Assembly. The Griffiths’ family lived at Richmond Villa until 1893, on short term leases once the property had been resumed by government in 1879.
Renaissance grotesque style
The panel is painted in a Renaissance grotesque style, a style of decorative ornament derived from Roman archaeological discoveries in the late fifteenth century, revived by artists in the sixteenth century and popularised across Europe through the work of Italian Renaissance painter and architect Raphael, known for his frescos in the Vatican. Instead of using the formal language of traditional classical ornament the grotesque style was characterised by the use of a great variety of motifs, metamorphic figures and hybrid monsters, sometimes parodies of classical mythology.
The central figure in the Richmond Villa panel is an androgenous, winged, version of a canephorus, the basket carrier from ancient Greece. The figure also has foliate twin tails and is thus a variant of the siren, the mythological fish-tailed woman, temptress of the seas. This canephorus/foliate siren hybrid was a standard element in the repertoire of the Renaissance grotesque.
Conserving the panel
Bill Boustead, Head of Conservation at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, inspecting the painted decoration at Richmond Villa in January 1976. Boustead managed the removal of the painted section of plaster for conservation. The painting was faced with cotton cheesecloth and adhered with a conservation type of adhesive containing molasses. This was the accepted, reversible, method used by fresco conservators at that time. The cheesecloth was then adhered to a stronger canvas and this was attached to a coreboard panel. The surrounding wall was chipped away and the plaster was carefully sawn off the wall using flexible multi strand wire.
When the panel came into the custody of the Historic Houses Trust in 2002, the process of reversing the protective facings was undertaken on behalf of the Trust by International Conservation Services.
Richmond Villa on its original site
This photograph, taken in the mid-1950s, shows Richmond Villa in its original location, facing the Domain. The Gothic exterior detailing of the house – decorative eaves fascia, barge boards to the window gables and bracketed verandah posts – is believed to have been taken from drawings of keeper’s lodges illustrated in H.B. Ziegler’s The Royal Lodges in Windsor Great Park, published in London in 1839. A copy of this book was owned by surveyor-general Thomas Mitchell and lent by Mitchell to Mortimer Lewis in 1841.
The street entrance to the house was on the west side from Domain Terrace which led into Macquarie Street. The stairs and service rooms were kept to the street side while the living rooms faced the view of the Domain. The ground floor contained two principal rooms: the drawing room with a semi-circular bow and the dining room with a square shallow bay - similar to the detailing at Government House Sydney - both contained within a straight verandah running across the whole of the garden front of the house.
Richmond Terrace in 1860
This detail is from a Survey of Portions of the Inner and Outer Domains, Parish of St James, City of Sydney, County of Cumberland, for site of Houses of Parliament, N.S.W. The plan was drawn by Edward Knapp jr, Licenced Surveyor , and transmitted to the Acting Surveyor General on 2 February 1860.
The plan shows the intersection of Macquarie and Hunters Streets and the original Legislative Chambers building. The footprint of Richmond Villa on its original site has been highlighted in pink. The Mitchell wing of the State Library of New South Wales was built on the southern side of Domain Terrace between 1906 and 1910, with extensions in 1929, 1939 and 1942. The street of once-fine houses forming Richmond Terrace was demolished in 1935 to make way for the 1939 library extensions. The more modest dwellings forming Domain Terrace had been demolished some years earlier.
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