Barnbougle Castle

Book Description

[London: Published by E. Gambart & Co. and Joseph Hogarth, 1854]. Tinted lithograph with additional hand-colouring and touches of gum arabic, mounted on card in the manner of a watercolour. Lithographed by Harding after a work by the celebrated marine painter Clarkson Stanfield. Signed in pencil by Stanfield in lower right corner and title written in pencil in lower left-hand corner. Very good condition apart from some minor foxing in the image, a bit of light soiling on the mount and a small water stain at the edge of the top margin. 10 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches. (of card) 17 1/2 x 22 3/8 inches. A beautifully coloured plate from the rare, deluxe edition of 'Scotland Delineated', a comprehensive series of lithographs of Edinburgh and its environs. Published between 1847 and 1854, Scotland Delineated was essentially a picturesque visual survey of Scotland assembled by Harding and the historical writer John Parson Lawson, who resided in Edinburgh. It was comprised of a number of plates engraved by various artists after the works of prominent artists including J. M. W. Turner, Joseph Nash, Thomas Creswick, and George Cattermole. Born in Deptford in 1798, the landscape painter and lithographer J. D. Harding was renowned for his prolific works as well as the pioneering innovations he introduced to the mediums of lithography and watercolour. Harding began his artistic training at an early age and exhibited his first drawings at the Royal Academy at age thirteen. After a brief apprenticeship with the engraver Charles Pye, he began working with watercolours and regularly exhibited his landscape paintings at the Society of Painters in Watercolours after 1818. He started experimenting with the medium of oil painting in 1843, and after years of exhibiting at the Royal Academy and attempting to become an academician, was reinstated as a member of the Watercolour Society in 1856. In addition to being a successful artist, Harding was a respected instructor, and he published numerous educational handbooks that were extensively used as textbooks in England and Europe. His untraditional practice of using bodycolour as well as conventional transparent colours (a technique derived from Turner) significantly influenced the course of modern watercolour painting and was widely adopted by the artists of the period. Harding also excelled in the art of lithography, and he published several popular series of plates including Sketches at Home and Abroad (1836), The Park and the Forest (1841), and Scotland Delineated (1847-1854). His works were extremely well received, and his introduction of the 'lithotint' technique and innovative use of tinted papers of various textures, which later became known as 'Hardin's paper', were extremely influential. Cf. Abbey, Scenery of Great Britain and Ireland, 1770-1860, #493; cf. Dictionary of National Biography.

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