An album of fifty-one drawings and watercolours comprising: 24 studies of trees, two of rocks, four of a house, one of a house beside a tree, four of rocks and trees, two of felled logs, two of rocks beside a fence, eight landscapes, one landscape with a castle, one landscape with a house, one seascape with subsidary drawings of yachts, one study of grass

Harding was a talented watercolourist, who travelled to Italy (see lot 393), Gibraltar, along the Rhine and in Normandy and was also amongst one of the more popular and successful drawing masters, who numbered John Ruskin among his pupils.

This rare intact album of drawings by Harding was probably executed as a learning aid for pupils. Two of the sheets are watermarked 1850 and may relate to Harding's Lessons on Trees, published 1852. It is an important document in elucidating the practice of teaching drawing in the 19th Century. Harding also published his Lithographic Drawing Book, 1832, Elementary Art, or the Use of the Lead Pencil, 1834 and in 1845 Principles and Practice of Art.

John Ruskin admired Harding's work and described him as 'after Turner, unquestionably the greatest master of foliage in Europe' (see John Ruskin, Modern Painters, I, p. 382).