This classic of art instruction is the work of James Harding (1798 - 1863), who served as drawing master and sketching companion to the great Victorian art critic, John Ruskin. Generations of students have benefited from the teachings of this nineteenth-century master, who sought always to “produce as near a likeness to Nature, in every respect, as the instrument, or material employed, will admit of; not so much by bona fide imitation, as by reviving in the mind those ideas which are awakened by a contemplation of Nature.. . The renewal of those feelings constitutes the true purpose of Art.”