Anna Eliza Hardy, the daughter of the artist Jeremiah Pearson Hardy and Catherine Sears Wheeler Hardy was born Jan. 26, 1839 in Bangor Maine. Anna Eliza, or Annie as she was known, was the only daughter and youngest of four children. Hardy's early education was that of schools in Bangor, Maine. She painted her first painting at the age of sixteen under her father's encouragement, promising her one of his landscapes if she would copy it.

Her love of color thus aroused, she spent most of the rest of her life in a prolific outpouring of small but exquisite still life. Her chief instructor was her father although she later painted for a short time in the studio of George Jeannin in Paris and had some instruction with the American Painte...