Evelyn Stuart Hardy (1866-1935)
Born as Beatrice Evelyn Stuart Hardy and almost always signed as E. S. Hardy, this British artist illustrated dozens of books for children, including the most popular nursery rhymes (Mother Goose and what happened next, in this case in collaboration with Reginald Birch) and fairy tales (including by brothers Grimm and H. C. Andersen), but her major artistic contribution were more than thousand biblical pictures, mostly for John Shaw, which are today popular collectibles.
Fairy tales are priority of this blog, so my choice for the presentation is one of E. S. Hardy's most known illustrations: the picture of the Little Mermaid.
As usual here are few interesting facts from Evelyn Stuart Hardy's life:
1. She had art in genes. Her mother Emily and her father David were both artists and same is true for her elder brothers David Paul and Norman Heywood. Although we don't know for sure when she was born (some resources say 1865, some 1870), we can be sure she showed her talent from early age by drawing and submitting to numerous periodicals for kids and ladies and soon illustrating books as well.
2. Evelyn's major employer in younger years was legendary printer and publisher Ernest Nister, born and working in Germany (Nuremberg was kind of world capital of toy making), but having headquarters in London and New York too. Nister specialized in high quality color printing and movable books. He improved many existing ideas as movable books (like transformation of one picture to another by pulling a tab) and devising new ones (like kaleidoscopic effect in so called magic windows). To achieve maximum results, he surrounded himself with top artists of the end of 19th century who were not only skilled in classical artistic techniques, but also willing to explore new media.
3. E. S. Hardy didn't only paint and illustrate (watercolors and gouache were her favorites), she also wrote few books herself. Already knowing how many pictures with biblical motifs she produced, we should not be surprised at one more specialty: she was very good at painting scenes from India and other Eastern countries.
So it seems appropriate to end our meeting with E. S. Hardy with a link to her presentation of Mahabharata for younger audience.
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