James Duffield Harding

In Barnham Marshes

For other people named James Harding, see James Harding (disambiguation).

James Duffield Harding (1798 - 4 December 1863), English landscape painter, was the son of an artist, and took to the same vocation at an early age, although he had originally been destined for the law. He first studied painting and engraving, and then took up watercolor.

He was in the main a watercolor painter and a lithographer, but he produced various oil paintings both at the beginning and towards the end of his career. He frequently contributed to the exhibitions of the Water-Colour Society, of which he became an associate in 1821, and a full member in 1822. He was also very largely engaged in teaching, and published several books developing his views of art – amongst others:

• The Tourist in Italy (1831)
• The Tourist in France (1834)
• The Park and the Forest (1841)
• The Principles and the Practice of Art (1845)
• Elementary Art (1846)
• Scotland Delineated in a Series of Views (1847)
• Lessons on Art (1849).

Portrait of James Duffield Harding (c. 1840) by Henry Perronet Briggs

Harding was noted for facility, sureness of hand, nicety of touch, and the various qualities which go to make up an elegant, highly trained, and accomplished sketcher from nature, and composer of picturesque landscape material; he was particularly skillful in the treatment of foliage. He was the inventor of “Harding's papers” (paper in different tints and textures for sketching).

He received two gold medals from the Academie des Beaux-Arts for his lithographic plates. Among his works in lithography are Home and Abroad (1836, fifty plates), Park and Forest (see above) and Picturesque Selections (1861).

He died at Barnes on the 4th of December 1863.

Bibliography and references

• Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of national biography, volume 24 (1890) pp. 336–7.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
•  "Harding, James Duffield". New International Encyclopedia. 1905. 

External links

• J D Harding online (ArtCyclopedia - 10 Oct 2010)
• J D Harding's Illustrations (Victorian Web - 10 Oct 2010)
• Paintings by J D Harding (Bridgeman Art Library)