watercolour painting

A watercolour by the English poet and painter William Blake. Blake, a deeply religious man, claimed to see visions and hear voices, and believed that materialistic values were meaningless and that he must trust his own instincts and imagination.

The Ancient of Days, an illustration by the English poet and painter William Blake for his poem ‘Europe, a Prophecy’. Blake was an admirer of the Italian painter Michelangelo, and his vision of God owes something to that great artist, but in Blake's own imagination the form of God is as a vision, and the compasses could also be a lightning flash.

Aquaduct at Chirk, a watercolour by English landscape painter John Sell Cotman. Cotman and other members of the ‘Norwich School’ realized their subtle landscapes by the broad use of colour in well-defined blocks, as in the sunlit arches of this canal aqueduct at Chirk in Wales.

An early watercolour of 1803, entitled Ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, by English landscape painter John Cotman, shows the artist's links with the Romantic painters and their love of atmosphere. Cotman later became an archaeological draughtsman, and his understanding of such work is clear, though his later paintings carry a more geometrical simplicity.

British Plums, a still life by English watercolour painter William Henry Hunt. Catching these plums at just the moment when they were picked, Hunt has preserved the look of the bloom on the fruit, and has fixed them in an autumn scene by including ripe rose hips. It was natural subjects such as this which earned him his nickname ‘Hedgerow Hunt’.

Grasmere by the Rydal Road, by Francis Towne, is an example of the English artist's landscape work in the English Lake District. Hardly recognized in his own lifetime, Towne became popular in the 20th century for the clear outlines of his graphic watercolours.

Method of painting with pigments mixed with water, known in China as early as the 3rd century. Watercolour is usually diluted to the point where it is translucent and applied to paper in broad areas known as washes. White paper is often left exposed to create highlights, and washes are applied over one another to achieve gradations of tone. The use of watercolour requires great skill since its transparency rules out overpainting. A fast-drying and portable medium, watercolours have become popular for sketching out-of-doors. The use of watercolour in Western art began in England in the 18th century with the work of Paul Sandby and was initially developed by Thomas Girtin, John Sell Cotman, and J M W Turner.

Raoul Dufy, Paul Cézanne, and John Marin are among those Western artists who excelled in watercolour painting. Others include William Blake, J R Cozens, Peter de Wint, John Constable, David Cox, John Singer Sargent, Philip Wilson Steer, Paul Signac, Emil Nolde, Paul Klee, and Paul Nash.