JAMES DUFFIELD HARDING, O.W.S. (1798-1863)

'THE CORSAIR'S ISLE' (1829)
Signed with initials to base of column l.l.
Watercolour with pencil, heightened with bodycolour, with scratching out & gum arabic
68.5 x 98 cm
 
PROVENANCE:
Benjamin Godfrey Windus (1790-1867), London [by 1853];
With Peter Nahum at the Leicester Galleries, London;
From whom purchased by the previous owner
 
LITERATURE:
Engraved by Alfred Lucas (1853) & by Joseph Bishop Pratt (1907)
 
 
 
 
A larger version of this subject, in oils, sold at Sotheby's, London, 15.07.1992. The subject is taken from ‘The Corsair’, a poem in heroic couplets by Lord Byron, published in 1814. In the poem, Conrad - a pirate chief in the Aegean Sea, guilty of many vices but dubiously chivalrous nevertheless - receives a warning that the Turkish Pasha is preparing to conquer the island on which he is based. Conrad determines to surprise him: he takes his men with him, and presents himself to the Pasha as the leader of a band of dervishes, recently escaped from ‘the pirate Conrad’. His men attempt to stage a coup among the Turks, and in the ensuing battle Conrad saves the chief concubine in the Pasha’s harem, saving her from certain death. The concubine, Gulnare, falls in love with him and petitions a stay of execution succesfully. She brings him a dagger to kill the Pasha in his sleep, an act that he deems too unchivalrous, and so Gulnare herself murders the Pasha. He returns to his island to find his old love, Medora, has died from a broken heart having heard he was dead. The poem ends with Conrad’s disappearance. Harding contributed a number of further illustrations to the works of Byron, as did many of his peers, which were largely of dramatic Italianate and Grecian landscapes. 
 
 
 
James Duffield Harding was born in Deptford, the son of a drawing-maser who had been a pupil of Paul Sandby. He learnt perspectival draughtsmanship from his Father and was also taught by Samuel Prout in his youth. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy when he was 13; though for several years he struggled with painting and was briefly apprenticed to an engraver. He eventually overcame this early difficulty and by the age of eighteen had been awarded a Silver Medal by the Society of Arts. Three years later he exhibited with the Society of Painters in Watercolours, a group with which he exhibited for the remainder of his career.
 
Harding was an early adopter of lithography as a means to disperse his drawings and watercolours more widely and published numerous works as instructive material for students. The earliest of these were largely drawing books of sketches from nature, which were especially well-produced by the standards of the day and won him acclaim at home and in France, where he was awarded two gold medals by the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Harding's popularity in France led him to dedicate his Sketches at Home & Abroad (1836) to King Louis Philippe. Harding's later educational publications were Lessons on Art; Guide and Companion to Lessons on Art; Elementary Art, or the Use of the Chalk and Lead Pencil advocated & explained; and The Principles and Practice of Art. Among his students, of whom there were many, Harding numbered the young John Ruskin, who praised him fulsomely in Modern Painters.
 
Harding's first Italian views were exhibited in 1830 (his first visit was in 1824) and were largely done on papers of a variety of tints and textures. Such was the popularity of this paper that Whatman produced that they were called 'Harding's papers'. Alongside this important influence on the broader development of British watercolour painting, Harding in part popularised the use of bodycolour for more effects than simply heightening in white (a technique pioneered amongst English artists by Turner a generation earlier).