The painting was on the wall in the entrance hall of the house owned by Sir Harold White, the Parliamentary Librarian of Australia, when he lived on Mugga Way in Red Hill in the 1940s and 50s.

Painted by Australian artist Esther Paterson, it shows the bustling city centre, with shoppers wandering around and through the iconic Sydney and Melbourne Buildings.

Dated 1947, the scene was painted not long after the buildings were completed in 1946, and in the foreground, among the many casual pedestrians enjoying the sunshine, is a woman in a red skirt.

She's in conversation with a blonde companion, and just behind them is a small girl with a doll's pram.

"It was so clear," Mrs Waterhouse told The Canberra Times. She said her distinctive skirt had been a gift from her husband, Doug, who had travelled through Hawaii en route back to Australia from Cambridge, where he had been at a conference.

"We were still in rationing after the war, and you couldn't get anything except with coupons. He brought us home piles of presents."

In the 1960s, after Sir Harold had moved out of his house and sold many of his possessions, Mrs Waterhouse found the painting an an antiques shop at the Yarralumla Brickworks, and promptly snapped it up.

It's been hanging in her own home ever since, and that's where Virginia Rigney, the senior art curator at Canberra Museum and Gallery, saw it and realised it was the missing piece in an upcoming exhibition.

Seeing Canberra, which opens next month, will show a collection of different representations of the capital by artists over the years; Mrs Waterhouse has agreed to loan the painting as a striking view of early Canberra.

Ms Rigney said the painting was unusual because it showed the city as "a busy cosmopolitan hub", in vivid colour, with a blue sky and green foliage.

"The painting is a rare view of what a lively precinct it was," she said.

"It's quite different from the sparse black and white photographs that are often characteristic views of this period."

Mrs Waterhouse, now a sprightly 96, is the youngest child of the Calthorpe family, early residents of Canberra who built their now-iconic house on Mugga Way in the 1920s.

As a young newlywed, she remembers frequent shopping trips in and around the city buildings, and lived nearby in the Myuna Flats on Northbourne Avenue, around the corner from the old Canberra Times offices on Mort Street in Braddon.

The flat had been her husband's bachelor pad, and the couple and their firstborn child Jill - the child in the painting - lived between there and Mrs Waterhouse's family home, before settling permanently on Melbourne Avenue in Forrest.

Today, Sir Harold's house is long gone, replaced by a modern mansion that recently sold for a record-breaking price to the founder of a popular fast food franchise.

And while the beautifully intact Calthorpe's House became an ACT museum in 1986, the Sydney and Melbourne Buildings, despite their iconic positioning as the gateway to the city centre, have long fallen into a state of neglect.

Standing in the same spot 73 years later, Mrs Waterhouse said she was despondent about the state of the buildings.

"They look terrible," she said.

The precinct is as busy as it ever was, being the city's main public transport hub, but the heritage-listed buildings have grubby, peeling facades and inconsistent colour schemes.

Head of the City Renewal Authority Malcolm Snow said the complicated ownership structure of the buildings had made it difficult over the years to maintain them consistently.

"Due to the state of the city economy at that time, the lots for these buildings were auctioned off separately and as a result we still have the challenge of managing 102 separate titles today," he said.

The authority is now consulting on a proposed renewal of the buildings, and will act as the "key liaison" and the various building owners. It recently completed its callout for public submissions on the future of the buildings, and Mr Snow said it was clear that there were strong feelings about their role in the city centre.

"We know that these historic buildings have a special place in the hearts of Canberrans," he said.

"Goodwill towards the revitalisation of the buildings has been demonstrated through the comments and feedback we've received to a draft legislative amendment that aims to restore their common areas."

He said the ACT government had already begun renewal works in the precinct, such as upgrading the paving and landscaping, and was preparing a revised conservation management plan.

Future renewal works will be focused on the building facades to improve their outward appearance.

For example, although the painting suggests the buildings were once sandstone coloured, in fact the different details of the facade were once various shades of off-white.

Mr Snow said consultations with current tenants would be simpler than in previous years, as there were now fewer owners involved.

"This is vitally important to our renewal effort, so that the Sydney and Melbourne Buildings fulfil their intended role as the marker buildings when you enter the centre of the national capital," he said.

Ms Rigney said the painting, and Mrs Waterhouse's role, showed how important memories were in the shaping of a city, and how integral the buildings could be in revitalising the city centre.

"We want to create new memories for people in Canberra with these beautiful buildings," she said.