Written by Denis Pellerin, co-curator of Victorian Virtual Reality: Photographs from the Brian May Archive of Stereoscopy

Florence and her twin brother Evan William were born at Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, on 29 January 1859, the first children of William “Tertius” Small, a twenty-eight-year-old warehouse man and clerk in a hosiery and gloves factory, and his wife Laura Curtis, three years his junior and the daughter of a schoolmaster and a schoolmistress. William was the third child of James Small and Elizabeth Gulliver, who was the daughter of one Lemuel Gulliver. Somebody in the Gulliver family definitely had a sense of humour.

Florence and Evan William’s parents had married the year before at Chard, Somerset, where Laura and her family were then living. The 1861 census lists the Small family as living on Elm Avenue, Nottingham, with Mrs Small’s brother, Henry Charles Foster Curtis, a twenty-four-year-old solicitor’s manager and clerk, plus a thirteen-year-old nursemaid named Mary Streets.

A third child was born on 18 April 1870 and was named Clara Eliza. The 1871 census shows the family was now living on Forest Road. Mr Small was still a warehouse man, his brother-in-law, Henry Charles Forster was still living with them, and he had been joined by his thirty-six-year-old sister, Clara, a teacher. The Smalls also had a nineteen-year-old servant named Harriet Downs and an eighteen-year-old nurse called Ann Barrows.

Florence seems to have learnt drawing with her mother before studying in Geneva, Switzerland, under a Miss Erica Lagier (1830-1878), who had herself been a pupil of Jean-Gabriel Scheffer (1796-1876) and signed her works with the letters R.I.K (in French they spell the name Erica). Florence visited Venice with Miss Lagier before going to Germany to further her studies. The young artist contributed a study entitled “Gwen” to an exhibition held at Nottingham in 1880.

By the time of the 1881 census she must have been abroad, as she is nowhere to be found, but that same year she had her first picture exhibited at the Royal Academy. It bore number 1355 in the catalogue and was entitled “Rosaria”. She was to wait four years before she had another picture hung there. In the meantime, she carried on sending pictures to exhibitions in her native town. The Artist and Journal of Home Culture reviewing the 1882 exhibition in Nottingham wrote:

Miss Florence Small, whose pictures have attracted some attention at two or three recent exhibitions, and who is now studying on the continent, sends “Little Nell,” “Little Dombey and Diogenes,” “Peep Bo,” and “Pêcheur Italien,” the last mentioned of which will perhaps be most admired.

In 1885 Florence was back on the walls of the Royal Academy with a work entitled “Welcome News”, depicting a girl reading a letter to an old man. The following year, she exhibited two paintings, “The Mushroom Girl" and “Nature’s Conquest”, of which the reviewer from The Builder said:

“Nature’s Conquest”, by Miss Florence Small, is a pretty picture of a young girl who has fallen asleep reading; the colour of the work also is pleasing and harmonious.

On 7 April 1887, Florence’s twin, who had become a lecturer, married Miss Maria Louisa Winder at the Parish Church of Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire. A few weeks later, Florence was exhibiting three paintings at the Royal Academy: “Autumn Leaves”, “Winter Berries”, and “Evlyn”.

That same year, which marked Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, Florence achieved some degree of fame by painting a portrait of the Queen after a photograph by Alexander Bassano (1829-1913). Her work, which was then turned into an oleograph – a lithograph made to look like an oil painting – was praised in the press of the time:

THE LARGEST AND BEST PORTRAIT OF HER MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA.

DECORATION OF SCHOOLROOMS, &c. AT THE QUEEN’S JUBILEE CELEBRATIONS.

THIS PORTRAIT, copied from a Picture painted from the Photograph of ALEXANDER BASSANO, London, by MISS FLORENCE SMALL, represents Her Majesty as she usually appears on State occasions. The likeness is pronounced to be most faithful. The size of the sheet is about 40 by 30 Inches. The picture is Lithographed in 15 Colours, and is it eminently suited to take a central place in the decoration of Schoolrooms and other places where the festivities will be held.

This fairly big picture was sold for 2s. 6d, which was considered cheap, and was produced by Messrs. Forman and Sons of Nottingham. The Leeds Mercury marvelled at the skill of the artist who had painted it.

The year 1887, which had been so promising, ended on a very sad note with the death, in December, of Florence’s mother.

Florence was back at the Royal Academy in 1888 with one painting entitled “Spring Blossoms” and in 1889 with another single picture called “Love Apples”. That same year she also exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery some pastels which attracted favourable comments in the press:

A half-length of a lady in white satin, with a book in her hand, called “The Poet”, by a comparatively unknown artist – Miss Florence Small – shows, together with many other good qualities, a good sense of pastel's capabilities and necessary limitations. The figure is correctly designed, naturally posed and has an air of cultivated grace and refinement. The artist’s full-length of a demure girl in a grey satin dress “The Little Quakeress,” is almost, is not quite, as good. The treatment of drapery in both pictures is thoroughly artistic.

Also in 1889, Florence spent some time in Paris where she studied at the Academie Julian – established in 1868 at the Passage des Panoramas by artist Rodolphe Julian (1839-1907) – under three different masters: academic painter William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), Tony Robert-Fleury (1837-1911), and Louis Henri Deschamps (1846-1902).

The following year she was back at the Grosvenor gallery with some more pastels, one of which, “My Lady’s Garden” was briefly mentioned in The Theatre:

Miss Florence Small is best represented by “My Lady’s Garden”.

In 1891 one of Florence’s pastels, “A Charming Figure of a Girl”, featured at the Cutlers’ Hall, Sheffield, and a painting entitled “Les pensées” was hung at the Royal Academy. The 1891 census shows Florence was now living at Cavendish Crescent, Flixton, Nottingham, with her widowed father, her younger sister Clara Eliza, who, aged twenty, was now a teacher of music, her aunt Clara Curtis, as well as a cook named Emily Thomson, and her eighteen-year-old sister, Mary Jane, who was employed as a housemaid.

In 1892 Florence had one of her pastels, “The Mother and Child”, exhibited at the Paris Salon.

On 7 June 1893, at St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham, Florence Small, aged thirty-four, married a solicitor by the name of Charles Frederick Hardy who was less than a year her senior and the eldest son of the late Charles Friend Hardy, of Clapham Park, London. Florence, who was then often referred to as Mrs Deric Hardy, moved to her husband’s house at 36, Gloucester-road, Regent’s Park, London, but did not cut ties with her native town. At the end of that year, one of her oil paintings was featured in the Nottingham Society of Artists exhibition. Earlier that same year another of her paintings, “Between the Lights”, had been hung on the walls of the Royal Academy.

Less than a year after her wedding, Florence Hardy was the topic of an article in the Wrexham Advertiser, written by a lady who signed her piece Penelope:

OUR LADIES’ COLUMN. BY ONE OF THEMSELVES.

Next day I penetrated almost to the foot of Primrose Hill, to visit the newly-appointed studio of a young lady, known to the lovers of art and in the catalogue of the Royal Academy and other picture galleries as “Florence Small” – but quite lately she has attained brevet rank, and has become “Mrs Hardy.” When last I saw her in London she was regretting to me that as her home and her friends are in Nottingham, she could not well have a studio also in London. However, I was able to congratulate her on thus solving the difficulty, and now possessing a very charming and artistic little house of her own, within reach of every advantage. On her easels stood many lovely pictures, which convinced me that marriage had not lessened her energy or impeded her artistic progress. Her husband, a man of law, was there, both in his personal presence and on canvas, on which his wife had delighted to trace his features in her best manner. She did not, however, call his picture by his name – but as she painted him in his office deeply engaged over some papers and legal documents, which he is seen studying, she christened it “A flaw in the pedigree”! Her mother-in-law also has a canvas to herself, and she is such a sweet-looking elderly lady that I am sure she and her daughter-in-law must thoroughly appreciate each other. The most important picture in this little studio is a group of charity girls who are weekly to be heard and seen singing in our own Parish Church of Marylebone, and she calls it “Our Father which art in Heaven.” Not being an art critic, I did not venture to pronounce an opinion as to the technical merits of this picture, which in itself pleased me much. But as I looked at it an old gentleman entered the studio and said with authority, pointing to this picture, “My dear, this is excellent; this is the best thing you have done.” He spoke so decidedly that I felt he was someone who had a right to do so, and immediately my pleased little hostess introduced him to me as “Mr Horsley.” What! thought I, the R.A. himself, whose name is so well-known as a painter and a critic, and who aids and abets the typical British matron in her objection to undraped studies of female figures.

The painting mentioned in the article and which was described by John Calcott Horsley as "the best thing Florence had done" was exhibited that same year at the Royal Academy along with another composition entitled “White Lilies". The owners of the illustrated weekly newspaper The Graphic purchased the wood engraving copyright of Florence’s “Our Father which art in Heaven” and published it in their 3 November 1894 issue.

The only known photograph of Florence’s London studio – a stereoscopic card by an anonymous photographer – was probably taken between 1894 and 1897. Now in the collections of Watts Gallery, it was part of the Rob Dickins collection after being owned by Jeremy Maas. This image features a typical Victorian interior and shows no fewer than five of Florence’s works, none of which I have been, so far, able to identify by title.

In 1895 Florence took part in the exhibition of the Society of Lady Artists, of which she was made a member in March of the following year. Early in 1897 she featured in the twentieth instalment of a series of articles published in the magazine Hearth and Home under the generic title “Women in the World of Art”. The article, a cutting of which I was able to buy on eBay, was accompanied by a photographic portrait of the artist, the only one I am aware of.

In the following years, Florence went on to exhibit at the Royal Academy. She had two paintings there in 1898, “A dirge” and “That little head of hers, Painted upon a background of pale gold”; one in 1899, “Flora resting”; and one again in 1900, “A bride”.

By the time of the 1901 census, Florence and her husband were still living at 36, Gloucester Road. They never had any children but with them lived two servants, Ada Whitney, 29, a cook, and Kate Cheriton, 34, a house parlourmaid. That year Florence exhibited two new works at the Royal Academy: “Rest, rest !” and “A Nymph”.

In 1908 Florence’s father, William “Tertius” Small, passed away, aged seventy-eight. The 1911 census shows that Florence and her husband had moved to new lodgings, at 17 Wadham Gardens, Hampstead. When the enumerator knocked on the door, Florence was not at home with her husband but visiting one of her neighbours, one Miss Fanny Emily Wilson, in the same house. Charles Frederick Hardy is still listed as a solicitor and his wife is referred to as an “Artist (Painter)”. Looking after them were three servants: Eliza Cable, twenty-six, the cook, Marion Bailey, thirty-five, the housemaid, and her younger sister Norah, nineteen, the parlourmaid.

Charles Frederick Hardy, died tragically in a motoring accident, aged sixty-nine, on 7 December 1927. He was buried on the following Monday. His wife survived him by just over five years. She died on 15 February 1933, merely twelve days after her twin brother. Florence and Evan were survived by their sister Eliza Clara who was not only a teacher of music but also a virtuoso violinist. She was, at some point, a member of the Nolandess Quartet, and often played with pianist Cecilia Dickson, at whose house she was a lodger. Clara Eliza, who never married, died in 1953.

NOTES

[1] The Artist and Journal of Home Culture, 1 June 1882, p. 169.

[2] The Builder, May 15, 1886, p. 705.

[3] The Globe, Saturday 18 June 1887, p. 8 of 8.

[4] Quoted in Truth, Thursday 23 June 1887, p. 45 of 48.

[5] The Graphic, 2 November 1889, p. 535.

[6] The Theatre, 1 December 1890, p. 300.

[7] Sheffield Independent, Thursday 12 February 1891, p. 3 of 8.

[8] John Calcott Horsley (1817-1903), British narrative painter who is best remembered for designing the first Christmas card (1843) and for his opposition to paintings of the nude.

[9] Wrexham Advertiser, Saturday 14 April 1894, p. 2 of 8. The same article was also reproduced on the same day in the Birkenhead News (p. 6 of 8) and, three days later, in the Derby Daily Telegraph (p. 4 of 4).

[10] If any reader of this article knows anything about one or several of these paintings, please contact me at denis@brianmayarchiveofstereoscopy.com.