Ministry of Information First World War Official Collection Q26182

Martin Hardie (1875-1952) was painter, printmaker, writer and museum curator. Born in London, Hardie was an expert on

watercolour Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...

s, and painted many himself. He was a member of the

Royal Watercolour Society The Royal Watercolour Society is a British institution of painters working in watercolours. The Society is a centre of excellence for water-based media on paper, which allows for a diverse and interesting range of approaches to the medium of wa ...

. In 1921 Hardie was appointed Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings at the

Victoria & Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, a position he kept until his retirement in 1935.

James Laver James Laver, CBE, FRSA (14 March 1899 – 3 June 1975) was an English author, critic, art historian, and museum curator who acted as Keeper of Prints, Drawings and Paintings for the Victoria and Albert Museum between 1938 and 1959. He was also ...

, who worked under him, described him as 'the most considerate of chiefs, the most helpful of guides, the most delightful of friends' and said 'his is a refined and delicate talent founded upon good draftsmanship and an exquisite sense of atmosphere'. In July 1925 he exhibited 6 works in the Fifth Annual Exhibition of the Australian Painter-Etchers’ Society, held at Art Gallery, Education Department, Sydney, NSW., (Catalogue of the Fifth Annual Exhibition of the Australian Painter-Etchers' Society, July 1925)

Published writing

* ''Watercolour Painting in Britain'', posthumously published in 3 volumes between 1966 and 1968. :Volume I: The Eighteenth Century (1966), London:

B. T. Batsford HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Publishing#Book publishing, Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette (publisher), Hachette, and Macmillan Publishers, Macmillan. The com ...

:Volume II: The Romantic Period (1967), London: B. T. Batsford :Volume III: The Victorians (1968), London: B. T. Batsford

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hardie, Martin (artist) 1875 births 1952 deaths 20th-century English male artists English male painters Painters from London