William Hardy Wilson

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William Hardy Wilson was a noted Australian architect, artist and author.

He was born in Campbelltown, New South Wales in 1881, the second son of William and Jessie Wilson. He was educated at Newington College from 1893 to 1898. The following year he was articled to the firm of Kent & Budden and studied at the Sydney Technical College. During this period he took instruction in art from Sydney Long.

Upon completion of his articles he went to England and successfully sat for the intermediate and final examinations of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In London his circle of friends included George Lambert and Arthur Streeton, and he served as secretary of the Chelsea Arts Club. Wilson travelled widely in Europe and the United States of America and became interested in the American Colonial style of architecture.

After returning to Sydney he married Margaret McKenzie, and in 1913 he went into partnership with Stacey Neave. Wilson exhibited regularly with the Society of Artists, and with other artists he founded the Fine Arts Society. In 1923 his work was hung in the Exhibition of Australian Art at Burlington House, London.

Early Australian architecture was the chief influence on his architectural work. Two of his best-known house commissions were built in the suburbs north of Sydney: Eryldene in Gordon (1914); and Purulia in Wahroonga (1916. (See portrait of W. Hardy Wilson at Purulia by Harold Cazneaux [1].) In 1920 he published The Cow Pasture Road, and Wilson and Neave invited John Berry to join the partnership. The following year Wilson visited China, and his architectural style started at that time to include Oriental elements.

Wilson contributed to Art in Australia, The Home, and The Sydney Morning Herald. In 1924 he published Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania. His other published books were The Dawn of a New Civilization (1929), Yin Yang (1934), Collapse of Civilization (1936), Grecian and Chinese Architecture (1937), Eucalyptus (1941), Instinct (1945), Atomic Civilization (1949) and Kurrajong: Sit-Look-See (1954).

In 1927 he left his architectural partnership and lived for three years in London before returning to Australia to live in Melbourne and then northwestern Tasmania. After the death of his first wife he married Elsie MacLean, and from 1940 they lived between a property at Wandin, near Mount Dandenong, and Kew in Melbourne. Wilson died in Richmond on 16 December 1955, survived by his wife and by the son of his first marriage. [2]

IMAGES

• William Hardy Wilson made drawings on a variety of subjects including early Australian domestic architecture [3], colonial homesteads and churches [4] and poultry and other birds [5].