In Brisbane townscape, William Bustard has captured the city’s late-1920s building boom, seen from high above Queen Street looking towards City Hall (then under construction), with Mt Coot-tha in the distance. His vantage point was likely in the vicinity of the Tattersalls building, on the corner Queen and Edward streets; the distinctive features of its edifice are evident in the close foreground.

Bustard rendered the burgeoning town centre in simplified blocks of pigment, with the cranes and unfinished City Hall clock tower providing dynamic counterpoints to the cityscape below. The simplified decorative style — the face of Modernism in Australia at this time — can also been observed in Vida Lahey’s Sultry noon [Central Station, Brisbane] 1931 and Charles H Lancaster’s A corner of Brisbane 1937. Interestingly, the reverse of Bustard’s painting features one of his more traditional Queensland landscapes.