A colony’s progress was often measured by the quality of its civic architecture. Colonial artists always found a market for views of the most substantial or important buildings, which, in Sydney, invariably included Government House. 

Built to plans provided by an English architect and occupied in 1845, the new Government House, with its battlements and castellations, was praised as a picturesque addition to the Harbour. It also illustrated the sentiment that although separated by ‘continents and oceans from our father-land, we have yet the pride of the British born to rear in their land such buildings as their sons may be proud to contemplate’.