Heywood Hardy

Heywood Hardy was a British Naturalist who was a painter and etcher of equestrian and sporting events, portraits and 18th-century scenes and landscapes. In Chichester, England on November 23, 1842, Heywood Hardy was born into a family of painters. At the age of 17, he began his career painting animals and succeeded in supporting himself solely from his paintings. He moved to Paris in 1864 to study with Pielse, a battle painter, while attending the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

He returned to London in 1870 where he found his paintings in high demand. His career flourished as he began working commissions for prominent figures in society to create portraits as well as equestrian and sporting paintings. Hardy also worked as an illustrator for The Illustrated London News and The Graphic Magazine. His early paintings largely consisted of landscapes, but he became famous later for his hunting and sporting genre. In 1926, at the age of 83, Hardy created a highly controversial eight-panel biblical scene for a church in West Sussex.

He passed away six years later in 1933 in West Sussex, England.