Frederick Daniel Hardy was born on 13th February 1827 at Windsor the third child of George Hardy and Sarah Lloyd. George Hardy was a musician to George IV, Queen Adelaide and Queen Victoria in the royal household at Windsor. Frederick studied at the Royal Academy of Music but in 1846 at the age of 19 decided to follow in the footsteps of his elder brother George Hardy and become a painter. On 11th March 1852 he married Rebecca Sophia Dorrofield at Chorleywood in Hertfordshire where their first son was born and, then, in 1854 the couple moved to Cranbrook, Kent where they had a family of four further sons and one daughter between 1855 and 1865. The Hardy's also maintained a property at Brunswick Gardens, Kensington in London where they lived when not resident in Cranbrook

Frederick Daniel Hardy, George Hardy, Thomas Webster, George Bernard O'Neill, John Callcott Horsley and Augustus Edwin Mulready were an informal group of six professional painters known as the Cranbrook Colony that thrived in Cranbrook in the latter half of the nineteenth century. They were a close association of colleagues and friends, and, in the case of the Hardy brothers and G.B. O'Neill, distant relatives. All six were "Genre" painters depicting scenes from daily life, either real or imaginary and, through their work, we have an accurate depiction of the people and homes in the Cranbrook area during the Victorian age. Often the Colony used their children, families and friends as models with the Hardys and Webster focused on rustic interiors and O'Neill and Horsley on picturesque historic architecture. The six painters, who occupied The Old Studio in the High Street, were prolific in their work and exhibited extensively at the Royal Academy and the British Institution.

On 1st April 1911 Frederick Daniel Hardy died at 1 Waterloo Place, Cranbrook and was buried at St. Dunstan's Church, Cranbrook