[1] He was apprenticed to the engraver Charles Pye, but left him after only a year to concentrate on painting watercolours, and when he was 18 he was awarded a silver medal by the Society of Arts.

His first productions were drawing-books, consisting of pencil sketches and studies of trees; they were printed in tints with two stones, allowing the reproduction of more elaborate drawings.

In 1841 he published The Park and the Forest, a set of sketches drawn on the stone with a brush instead of the crayon, a technique of his own invention which he called "lithotint".

The papers, which proved popular amongst both amateur and professional artists, and which Harding used himself, were produced in white, and in shades of cream, buff and grey.

[4] He was described by Gilbert Redgrave in A History of Water Colour Painting in England as "a skilful and rapid draughtsman, though somewhat mannered, and rarely rising above the commonplace.