A Festive Treat

Frederick Daniel Hardy was one of the leading members of the Cranbrook Colony, the group of artists who gathered round Thomas Webster when he settled in this small town sixteen miles south-east of Tunbridge Wells in the mid-1850s. From this date on he tended to work to a certain formula, in box-like interiors placed parallel to the picture plane. The previous lot and the present work contain many of the Cranbrook concerns: humble but industrious interiors, views through a door to another group of spectators looking at activity in the foreground, and groups of small children gathered intently round an event.