Rare, 19th Century Jeremiah Pearson Hardy (American 1800-1887) Oil Painting on Board. Depicting a young girl with a pink dress holding flowers. Measures - 11 1/2" wide x 13 1/2" high, total with frame - 17 1/4" wide x 19" high. With original period frame, original frame shop sticker from Bangor, Maine; where Jeremiah Hardy was a teacher. Provenance: Francis Baker of Augusta, Maine, circa 1845, granddaughter of John Reed of Cushnoc. Cousin of Mary Augusta Reed Norton, granddaughter of John Reed. Portrait painted, circa 1845 by Jeremiah P. Hardy, an early portrait artist. Jeremiah Pearson Hardy, a portrait painter was born in Pelham, New Hampshire in 1800. He first worked as an engraver in Maine. In 1821, he went to Boston, Massachusetts to study painting with David Brown. He received further training from Samuel F. B. Morse in New York City. In 1827, he returned to Maine, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. Hardy was a teacher in Bangor; among his students were George Edward Dale and Walter Lansil. Anna Eliza Hardy (artist) and Francis Willard Hardy (photographer) were his children and Mary Ann Hardy (miniaturist) was his sister. Although his career has not been fully studied, Hardy seems to have rejected the painterly portrait style of his teacher, Morse. His double portrait from the 1840s, Catherine Wheeler Hardy and Her Daughter (circa 1842, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is characterized by crisply delineated forms, sharp silhouettes, tight, controlled handling of paint, and a smooth surface. It has been cited as an example of the permeation of the aesthetic of Luminism to genres of painting other than landscape. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston owns several other portraits by Hardy. He died in 1888.