Frederick Daniel Hardy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frederick Daniel Hardy (13 February 1827 Windsor - 1 April 1911 Cranbrook, Kent)[1][2] was a British genre painter and member of the Cranbrook Colony.
The son of George Hardy who was a musician to George IV, Queen Adelaide and Queen Victoria in the royal household at Windsor, Frederick enrolled at the Academy of Music, Hanover Square, at age seventeen, where he studied for three years. At the end of this period he left the world of music and concentrated on painting.[3] Frederick's eldest brother George Hardy (1822-1909), was also a well-known painter.
Hardy remained in Windsor until his marriage on 11 March 1852 to Rebecca Sophia Dorrofield (c.1828–1906), who was the daughter of William Dorrofield, a farmer from Chorley Wood. The marriage produced five sons and a daughter. After living for some years at Snell's Wood, near Amersham, Buckinghamshire, they settled at 2 Waterloo Place, Cranbrook, Kent in 1854, where they stayed until 1875, when they moved to Kensington, returning to Cranbrook about 1893.
Like Webster, his mentor who joined him at Cranbrook in 1857, and was related to Frederick's mother, Hardy specialised in light-hearted scenes depicting children in detailed Victorian rooms, and also painted portraits. He exhibited ninety-three pictures at the Royal Academy from 1851 to 1898 and five at the British Institution between 1851 and 1856. His work is to be found in numerous public collections, notably in the nineteen paintings at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
He was buried beside his wife in St Dunstan's churchyard in Cranbrook and left his estate to his daughter Amelia Gertrude (1865–1952) who lived and painted in Cranbrook into the 1930s.
