Heywood Hardy, A.R.W.S., R.P.E. (1842-1933)

Heywood Hardy was born in Bristol and studied painting in London, Antwerp and Paris. He came from a family of artists, his father, James Hardy, was a well-regarded landscape painter and his older brother, James Hardy junior, painted horses and dogs, often in English and Scottish Highland hunting settings. Hardy himself painted a wide variety of subjects, but is most well known for his hunting and coaching scenes, exhibiting at all the major exhibitions of the day including the Royal Academy, the British Institution, Suffolk Street, the Old Watercolour Society and the New Gallery. Hardy was also a skilful etcher and illustrator who contributed to The Illustrated London News and The Graphic. In the present lot Hardy depicts the huntsman in a red coat astride his horse, sending the hounds into a copse to flush out the fox.