1950s Wahroonga modernist home by Sydney Ancher listed

Artist Ursula Laverty, the widow of the Peter Laverty, the former director of the Art Gallery of NSW, has listed her Wahroonga home.

The four-bedroom home, set on a 2255 sqm Eastern Rd block, was designed by the modernist architect, Sydney Ancher for the couple in 1952.

Offers for the home close September 4, with McGrath agents Amanda Robertson and James Sutton. Their price guide is $3.5 million to $3.85 million.

There’s an artist’s studio on the block — the couple met at Winchester School of Art in England.

From 1952 to 1971, Peter Laverty held several positions at the National Art School, where he introduced photography as a course. From 1971 until 1977 he was as the Art Gallery of NSW.

“These were very enjoyable times in my life, but being a full-time painter is the most fulfilling of all,’’ he recalled a few years before his 2013 death.

As newlyweds, Peter and Ursula moved into the house designed for them by their architect friend.

With a skillion roof, plenty of floor-to-ceiling windows and a large studio, it was on what had been an orchard. There was a dairy over the back fence.

An old persimmon tree and the blossoms on pear and plum trees in springtime inspired some of Peter’s paintings.

All three of their children went to art school, including daughter Fabia Tory, who published a memoir in 2016, A Book of Not Forgetting.

This article was first published in the Sunday Telegraph.