The painting depicts a man and a woman standing in front of their fireplace in a room.

The work "pervades a sense of flatness, embodied by Brack's smooth application of paint, emphasising the clean, sparse qualities of the room.

"[1] In The new house, Brack boldly tackled the question of what Australian art could be in the 1950s.

The painting aggressively dispensed with the two most obvious options at the time; epic, folkloric figuration and cosmopolitan abstraction.

Bushrangers and explorers were replaced by the new pioneers, the young home buyers of the suburbs.Previously part of the Grundy collection, the Art Gallery of New South Wales acquired the work in 2013 for A$1.6 million.