Thomas Hardwicke

Major-General Thomas Hardwicke (1756

During his military career in India, Hardwicke travelled extensively over the subcontinent. He started collecting zoological specimens in these travels and amassed a large collection of paintings of animals which he got local artists to make. Most paintings were made from dead specimens, but many were also drawn from life. When he left India, he had the largest collection of drawings of Indian animals ever formed by an individual. Some drawings were also made by his daughter Elizabeth (between 1811 and 1815 – it was her poor health that led Hardwicke to leave India).

The Indian artists employed by Hardwicke are unknown, except for one Goordial, but they were trained and their style was adapted to the demands of technical illustration using watercolours. The collection was bequeathed to the British Museum in 1835 which was later partly moved to the Natural History Museum. The collection consists of 4500 illustrations.

Hardwicke's enthusiasm for the natural history of India was matched by the leading naturalists in England, with whom he corresponded. He was in contact with Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, and Hardwicke himself became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1813. His collections of illustrations were used by zoologists like J. E. Gray. The two volume Illustrations of Indian Zoology was published with Hardwicke's financing, containing 202 large hand-coloured plates, but he died before the textual part was produced. Gray described and named many of the species in the work except for some of the testudines which were named on the basis of the manuscripts of Thomas Bell. Some drawings of shells and plants which were part of the collections he bequeathed were probably made by his sister. Saara hardwickii – Hardwicke's spiny-tailed lizard,