The Hyde Park Barracks building in Macquarie Street Sydney was designed by convict architect Francis Greenway to house male convicts and erected 1817-1819. From 1848 to 1886 it served as an Immigration Depot for single females and in 1887 the central dormitory buildings and other buildings in the compound were converted to courts and legal offices. A series of additional buildings were later erected in the courtyard. The Industrial Arbitration Court occupied part of the site from 1912-1927.
The English-born painter and printmaker Alfred Edward Warner came to Australia from New Zealand in 1919. He sometimes used the names Edgar or Edmund Warner and also used the pseudonyms G. Marler, J. Dodd, C. Jack, Breuton and 'The Marlers'. He exhibited with the Australian Painter Etchers Society and the Society of Artists in Sydney in the 1920s and early 1930s. This print is one of a number of views of Hyde Park Barracks made by Warner/Marler, and variously titled 'The old District Court', 'The District Court', 'Arbitration Court' and 'Queen's Square'. This print appears to be a cropped version of an etching titled 'The District Court' and signed and dated ETW/1923, which was exhibited at the Third Annual Exhibition of Etchings by the Australian Painter Etchers Society in Sydney in July 1923.
