sketcher and storekeeper, migrated from Leeds, Yorkshire, and arrived at Melbourne on 12 November 1852 aboard the Great Britain . Two weeks later he sailed to Van Diemen’s Land and stayed for a few months at Westbury, near Launceston. He returned to Melbourne in May 1853 and unsuccessfully applied for the position of assistant town clerk at Geelong. In June he came to Sydney to stay at Paddington with John Stamper . Hardwick worked voluntarily at a nearby Wesleyan Sunday School until October 1853, then was appointed clerk in the office of Lyall, Scott & Co., merchants and importers. By July 1856 he was working as a storekeeper in Rylstone, a small town near Mudgee, New South Wales, and continued in business there until his death on 17 January 1891. He was survived by his wife Rebecca and seven children.
Hardwick filled a number of sketchbooks with watercolour and pencil views in Van Diemen’s Land, New South Wales and Victoria (ML (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney)) and often illustrated the letters he sent home to his family in Leeds. He once expressed a desire to paint in oils and produce what he called 'real’ pictures, but complained that he had neither time nor opportunity. Although crude, his drawings are fresh and detailed and most contain lengthy inscriptions describing the view. In 1853-54 he and Stamper went on sketching trips together and occasionally Hardwick copied Stamper’s work. Some of Hardwick’s sketches are said to have been used for woodcut illustrations in the Illustrated Sydney News in the mid 1850s.
- Writers:
- Watkins, Jonathan
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
