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Frederick Daniel, George, Heywood, James and their descendants are the celebrated Hardy family of artists, some of the leading genre painters of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Heywood Hardy was one of the best Victorian animal painters and instrumental in advancing a more realistic portrayal of animals, leaving behind the romanticised representations of Landseer. His elder brother James was amongst the most accomplished sporting artists of the day, while their cousins Frederick Daniel and George painted some of the most sympathetic pictures of county towns and villages. Here is putting at Blackheath, a splendid music room at Brighton Pavilion, a Scottish country scene of a young gillie with his setter dogs and dead game, stunning portraits of Grand National-winning horses, foxhounds and hunting dogs and hunting scenes, riding on sand dunes in Morecambe as young girls and women enjoy holiday time in 1908, the sale of Cavalry horses in 1884, two Victorian ladies being scared by a bull over the fence, a lion cub, corn stooks by Bray Church, a mother and child posting a letter, a baby's birthday and other family scenes like taking in orphans, a firstborn and trying on spectacles. James Hardy Sr was a miniature portrait painter; his granddaughter Mable Emily Lee-Hankey maintained the tradition and painted a famous series of miniatures of Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, held in the Royal Collection. The author discusses the life and work of each artist and the influences of each other's paintings, the context of artistic and social developments and draws on contemporary sources to expertly illustrate how critics and collectors viewed the work of the Hardy family. Many are reproduced here in colour for the very first time in this beautifully made 224 page large art gallery, 9½" x 12". Colour.