Charlotte Harding (Brown) was born in Newark, New Jersey, a daughter of Joseph and Charlotte Elizabeth (Matthews) Harding. She studied at Philadelphia's School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art) and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She attended Howard Pyle's illustration class at Drexel Institute from 1897 to 1899; during these years she illustrated two novels. By 1900, her work was appearing in major magazines.
Harding's subjects often focused on family scenes and romantic love. She moved from ink and oil to charcoal as her career progressed.
In 1905 Harding married James Adams Brown, a mechanical engineer. By 1915, the couple was living in Smithtown, Long Island (NY) and she had ceased commercial work. They had one daughter, Charlotte Adams Brown.
Shortly before her death, she told fellow Howard Pyle student Thornton Oakley that she had given a collection of her drawings to the Library of Congress and burned the rest.
Harding won silver medals at the Women's Exposition in London in 1900, at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, and at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915.
She was a member of the Plastic Club (Philadelphia) and the Philadelphia Water Color Club.
Sources:
A Small School of Art: The Students of Howard Pyle, by Rowland Elzea and Elizabeth H. Hawkes. Delaware Art Museum, 1980, and related references
