Watercolor

I

Introduction

Watercolor, in art, a type of painting that employs colored pigments dissolved in water. The distinguishing characteristic of watercolor painting is its transparency. The surface of the paper is visible through the thin watercolor pigments, creating an effect distinct from the thick texture of oil painting and other more dense media.

II

Watercolor Techniques

Watercolor paints are produced by binding dry powdered pigments with gum arabic, a vegetable adhesive. The resulting paint can then be dissolved in water and applied to paper with a brush. Although this is a relatively modern technique, various related types of water-based paints have been used throughout recorded history. The painted papyrus scrolls of ancient Egypt may be considered the first watercolors, and the ink techniques of early Asian art are early forms of monochrome, or single-color, watercolor. Water-soluble pigments combined with a thickener derived from eggs were used in European illuminated manuscripts during the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), and medieval frescoes employed a type of water-bound pigment stiffened with opaque white paint. Later types of opaque water-soluble paints such as gouache, which continue to be used today, are closely related to watercolors.

III

Renaissance Watercolors

The landscape and animal studies of 15th-century German master Albrecht Dürer are usually considered the earliest true watercolors. Dürer used tinted waterpaints to color his pen drawings of natural history subjects. These watercolors do not form a large part of his work, but they have become classics in the genre of detailed, precise nature drawings. During the 16th and 17th centuries, water-based paints were used only occasionally by artists, and monochrome, rather than tinted, paint was preferred. Earth-colored bistre, a yellow-brown pigment, and blackish sepia, made from the ink of squids, achieved brief prominence through the work of French artist Claude Lorrain and Dutch master Rembrandt, both of whom used them to create expressive atmospheric effects of cloud and sky in their ink landscape drawings. The use of colored water paints during this period was rare, found only in the works of a few minor masters, such as Dutch painters Hendrick Avercamp and Adriaen van Ostade.

IV

English Watercolors

Watercolor painting developed chiefly in England in the second half of the 18th century and went hand in hand with the development of romanticism, which glorified nature and natural beauty. Not only was watercolor the medium best suited for painting out of doors (principally because the paint dried quickly), but it was also naturally adaptable to rendering common romantic themes, such as stormy skies, fogs and mists, and billowing foliage. At first, English watercolorists followed in the Dutch tradition, using washes of water paint to give color to pen or pencil drawings. By the mid-1700s, however—especially in the innovative work of Paul Sandby—watercolor technique was freed from these bonds as artists began to apply paint directly to paper without following previously drawn outlines. This development marked the maturity of watercolor as an art form, and the method became increasingly popular. Subject matter extended far beyond landscape to include mystical paintings, such as those of William Blake, and satiric social scenes, such as those of cartoonist Thomas Rowlandson.

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John Robert Cozens, in his paintings of the Swiss Alps, used gentle color to depict nature's intensity, bringing grandeur to what was a tradition of pastoral watercolor landscape. He was a prime influence on Thomas Girtin and J. M. W. Turner, the two great masters of the English watercolor. In the first half of the 19th century Turner achieved a brilliancy and luminosity of color that was never surpassed.