deans of Westminster, engraved by J. Stow, R. Grave, and others, intended to illustrate Neale and Brayley's 'History of Westminster Abbey.' This was followed in 1825 by 'Ancient Oil Paintings and Sepulchral Brasses in the Abbey Church of St. Peter, Westminster,' with descriptions by Thomas Moule, F.S.A. Among many important historical works to which he supplied the plates was J. H. Jesse's 'Memoirs of the Court of England during the Reign of the Stuarts,' 1840. He gave much time to the preparation of a manuscript account of the Princes of Wales, elaborately illustrated with portraits and heraldic devices, which is now in the royal library at Windsor. Of this he issued a privately printed description in 1828. In 1840 Harding took a leading part in establishing the Granger Society (named after the author of the 'Biographical History of England'), the object of which was the publication of previously unengraved historical portraits. In his drawings he had accumulated a store of material for this purpose, but through mismanagement and lack of support the society came to an end, after publishing a few excellent prints, early in 1843. Harding then carried on the work on his own account, and during the next five years issued a series of fifteen plates, engraved by Joseph Brown and W. Greatbach, with biographical notices by Mr. Moule. The copperplates of these afterwards passed into the hands of Mr. J. Russell Smith of Soho Square, who reissued the work in 1869. Harding was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1839, but withdrew in 1847. Towards the end of his life he fell into pecuniary difficulties, and was compelled to sell his collections of drawings. He died at Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, where he had resided for more than thirty years, on 23 Dec. 1853. He left a large family by a second wife. His portrait was engraved by J. Brown, from a miniature by himself, in 1826. A collection of his works is in the print room of the British Museum.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists; Gent. Mag. new ser. xli. 548; Brit. Mus. Library Catalogue.]
HARDING, JAMES DUFFIELD (1798–1863), landscape-painter and lithographer, born at Deptford in 1798, was son of a drawing-master of ability, who had been a pupil of Paul Sandby. He was taught perspective by his father, received some instruction from Prout, and at the age of thirteen exhibited two drawings at the Royal Academy; these were views of buildings in the manner of Prout. His first attempts at studying from nature were so unpromising that for a time he abandoned the idea of becoming a painter, and his father articled him to Charles Pye, an engraver. Engraving proved distasteful to him, and having by perseverance overcome his original difficulties, he left Pye at the end of a year, and settled down to the practice of water-colour painting. At the age of eighteen he was awarded a silver medal by the Society of Arts. In 1818 he exhibited for the first time with the Society of Painters in Watercolours, and during the whole of his life was a regular contributor to its exhibitions, of which his works, illustrating the scenery of nearly every country in Europe, formed one of the chief features. He was elected an associate of the society in 1820 and a full member in 1821. In 1843 he took up oil-painting, and exhibited many landscapes in that medium at the Royal Academy, and in 1847 resigned his membership of the Water-colour Society in order to compete for academy honours; but in this he was unsuccessful, and, after keeping his name on the list for nine years, withdrew his candidature in 1856, and was re-elected into the Water-colour Society.
From an early period Harding was a successful and popular teacher. When lithography came into vogue in this country, he quickly adopted it as a means of providing good examples for the use of pupils and students, and in the many works which he published greatly developed the resources of the art, carrying it in fact to a point of excellence which has not been surpassed. The 'Académie des Beaux Arts' had awarded him two gold medals for lithographic drawings exhibited at the Louvre. His early productions were drawing-books, consisting of pencil sketches and studies of trees; he printed with two stones in tints, and thus reproduced successfully more elaborate drawings. His 'Sketches at Home and Abroad,' a series of fifty plates done in this manner and published in 1836, excited general admiration, and King Louis Philippe, to whom the work was dedicated, sent the artist a breakfast service of Sevres china and a diamond ring. In 1841 he published 'The Park and the Forest,' a set of beautiful sketches drawn on the stone with a brush instead of the crayon, a plan he devised, and to which he gave the name of 'lithotint.' Among his many other lithographic works were 'A Series of Subjects from the Works of R. P. Bonington,' 1829-30; 'Recollections of India,' from drawings by the Hon. C. S. Hardinge, 1847; and 'Picturesque Selections,' 1861, his last and finest achievement. A series of twenty-four autotypes from the original drawings done for 'Sketches at Home
