The history of watercolor painting in the United States

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February 23, 2011

The earliest watercolor paintings known to have been produced in America were around the 1560′s when artists began to create visual documentation of the “new world” for European explorers to take back to the “old world”.

Mark Catesby was one of the first artists who documented hundreds of different species of American plant and bird life through his hand-colored prints. Catesby’s work was the forerunner for the popular depictions of American wildlife by John James Audubon who devoted himself to recording this aspect of the North American continent in a style which has been seldom equaled in any other medium.

However, watercolor painting did not become really popular in the United States until the late nineteenth century.  Up until this time, American artists had worked in the shadow of their European counterparts but the gradual emergence of skilled and talented artists like Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), Winslow Homer (1836-1910) and James A. M. Whistler (1834-1903) began to challenge European artists.

By 1866, the interest in this medium was so popular that the American Society of Painters in Water Color (now the American Watercolor Society) was founded and for the first time, watercolors were shown in galleries in the United States alongside oil paintings.

Although Americans inherited their techniques from the English artists, they were interested in experimenting with watercolor in their own way which led to the creation of works which were extremely individual and less rigid than the traditional English work. The American school exploded with an abundance of important figures between the 1870′s and the early twentieth century, including John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), John Marin (1870-1953) and Maurice Prendergast (1859-1924).  Since there was no particular style of watercolor, each artist represented a unique approach to the medium.

During the 1940′s, artistic experimentation continued to be a major focus, particularly in the New York art scene and this resulted in the development of Abstract Expressionism. Unfortunately, watercolor therefore began to lose a certain amount of its popularity because they were small and intimate in scale and did not play a role in the huge canvasses of the Abstract Expressionists.

Categories: American Artists, Watercolour Facts.

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Paul Cezanne – ‘Father of Modern Art’

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February 20, 2011

Paul Cezanne was born on 19th January 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, France and was the son of a wealthy banker.  He showed an interest for art at an early age and in 1861 he joined his boyhood companion and fellow artist, Emile Zola in Paris.  However, he lasted only 6 months there and returned to Aix-en-Provence to work with his father.  This was also a failure and convinced him to try a painter’s life again and he was to spend the next twenty years dividing his time between the Midi and Paris.

Whilst in Paris he met Camille Pissarro and others of the impressionist group, however he remained an outsider as his work was consistently rejected by the official SALON.  His early work up until 1870, often referred to as his early ‘romantic period’ was very sombre in nature and used extremely heavy paintwork.  Thankfully Cezanne moved on from this approach and thereafter his work can conveniently be divided into three phases.

In the early 1870s, thanks to his association with Pissarro, with whom he often painted, he loosened up his brushwork and began to assimilate the principles of Impressionism through the colour and lighting of his work.

In the late 1870s he entered the phase known as ‘constructive’, whereby his work built up a sense of mass in themselves due to the hatched brushstrokes that he was using and this style was to continue until the early 1890s.

Cezanne moved into his third and final stage when he chose to live as a solitary in Aix rather than alternating between the south and Paris, and the concentration for his work was just a few basic subjects, such as still lifes of objects found in his studio and views of a nearby landmark, Monte Sainte Victoire which he painted from his studio looking across the valley.

By the time of his death in October 1906, Cezanne’s art had begun to be shown and seen across Europe, and it became a fundamental influence on virtually all advanced art of the early 20th century.


Categories: European Artists, Watercolour Facts.

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Watercolour Challenge – Search to find Britain’s best amateur painter

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February 15, 2011

We all have friends who see themselves as amateur painters and maybe spend a few hours at the weekend or whilst they are on holiday working with their watercolours.

For many, it is just a means of unwinding as opposed to actually expressing a part of themselves through their art, but some would like their art to be taken more seriously and that’s why a British TV programme called ‘Watercolour Challenge’ became such a hit.

‘Watercolour Challenge’ was first broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1998 and ran until 2001.  There were 4 series in total, each featuring about 50 episodes. It was hosted by actress Hannah Gordon, and the challenge was to find Britain’s best amateur painter and also explore some of the country’s magnificent landscapes along the way.

In each programme, three amateur artists were given a maximum of four hours to paint the same scene/landscape in watercolour and as you can imagine, there were often very different interpretations by each artist.  Each week, the programme featured a different guest professional artist and at the end of the alloted time, they would judge the individual paintings and decide on a winner for that round.  The winner would then go on to appear in a regional final and then the winners of all the regional finals competed in a grand season finale.

The guest artist also had a segment on the show where they provided tips for the audience on how to improve their painting technique.

The location for each landscape being painted changed for every programme, and a number of different regions in both Great Britain and Ireland were visited throughout the course of the four years.

Even though the television programme is no longer airing, there are still two books which you can get your hands on relating to the show – ‘Watercolour Challenge: A Complete Guide to Watercolour Painting’ and ‘Watercolour Challenge: Practical Painting Course’.

‘Watercolour Challenge’ has certainly helped to boost the profile of painting in watercolour, widened it’s appeal, and no doubt inspired many more people to paint in this medium who otherwise would never have thought of doing so.

Categories: Watercolour Facts.

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John Constable – English Landscape Painter

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February 13, 2011

John Constable is probably regarded as one of the most important English landscape painters of the 19th century.

He was born in 1776 in East Bergholt, a small village in the picturesque county of Suffolk. His father, Golding Constable was a wealthy mill and land owner and John worked in the family business until his early twenties.  In fact the intention was for John to take over the business from his father, however he was already beginning to show such a talent for art that his father allowed him to leave Suffolk in 1799 and enroll at the Royal Academy in London. It was here that he met fellow RA student, William Turner with whom he would have a long rivalry over the years.

Despite studying at the academy, John Constable remained largely self-taught because his love was for landscape painting, and if you wanted to make a name for yourself as an artist in the 1800s, you had to paint portraits or historical pieces which did not interest Constable.

However he did have his first exhibition in London in 1802 and in the same year bought a studio back in Suffolk.  He met his future wife, Maria Bricknell in 1809 and they were finally married seven years later after much hostility from Maria’s family who did not think that this penniless artist was good enough for their daughter.  They had a very happy marriage and had seven children.

Constable’s wife died from tuberculosis in 1828 and it was such a pity because, aside from the huge loss Constable felt at his wife’s death,  he had only just began to taste real success with his spectacular, large-sized canvases. He was the first painter to ditch the classical browns and it was his fresh, atmospheric paintings with their magnificent skies that really began to impress people.  In particular he had a lot of success in France, after his work was displayed in a 1824 exhibition of English painters in Paris.  His fellow Englishmen were comparatively slow to admire his genius  and it wasn’t until 1829 that he finally received membership to the Royal Academy.

John Constable died unexpectedly in the night on 31st March 1837.

Categories: European Artists, Watercolour Facts.

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Albrecht Durer – German Renaissance Artist

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February 7, 2011

In our previous post, “A Brief History of Watercolour painting” we made reference to Albrecht Durer and the importance of his work during the European Renaissance period and today we are going to find out a little more about his life and work.

Albrecht Durer was born in 1471 in Nuremberg, Germany and was the son of a goldsmith. However his first artistic influence was probably from his godfather, Anton Koberger, who was a printer and publisher.  Koberger’s most famous publication was the Nuremberg Chronicle, which included illustrations in wood and it is thought that Albrecht probably learnt at a very early age about woodcuts and printing while working on this publication with Koberger.

Albrecht was the first artist to create a self-portrait at the tender age of thirteen, using a mirror to draw his likeness and he would go on to produce several more portraits of himself in later years.

Albrecht’s extraordinary talent for drawing was recognised when he was fifteen years old and he became an apprentice to Michael Wolgemut who was an important artist in Nuremberg at the time. Wolgemut’s workshop became famous for creating various works of art but in particular for woodcuts for books.

Durer’s training also involved him travelling and studying abroad.   In 1494, he went to Italy, and the inspiration he obtained from the Italian artists led him to return again between 1505-6.  In fact the contact he had with Italian painters was clear to see in his work and he began to place greater importance on the colour in his paintings. Durer was a great admirer of Leonardo da Vinci and so intrigued was he by the Italian’s study of the human figure, that he began to apply Leonardo’s proportions to his own figures.

Durer made many works during his lifetime ranging from religious and mythologicalscenes, to maps and exotic animals, but more than simply producing works for his own time, Dürer saw his to contribution to the art world as a part of history.

He died on April 6, 1528 in his home town of Nuremberg, Germany and after his death, there followed a period known as the Durer Renaissance as artists across Europe admired and copied his innovative and powerful prints.

Categories: European Artists.

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William Blake – English poet & painter

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February 4, 2011

Another one of the featured artists at the upcoming watercolour exhibition at Tate Britain later this month is the English poet & painter, William Blake.

Blake was a reclusive but also a visionary artist of his time, who published and illustrated his own books, most of which had an obscure religious and mythical theme.

He was born in London in 1757 and his parents could only afford to give him basic schooling, though for a short time he was able to attend a drawing school.

Blake worked with his father until his talent for drawing became so obvious that he started an apprenticeship at the age of fourteen with the engraver, James Basire at age 14 and set out to make his living as an engraver.

He married when he was twenty five years of age and his wife, Catherine Boucher worked with him and together they published a book of Blake’s poems and drawings entitled “Songs of Innocence”. Unfortunately this book did not sell much during his lifetime, which meant Blake and his wife struggled close to poverty for most of their lives.

Unfortunately Blake did not have a good head for business, and he preferred to concentrate on his own subjects rather than taking up his publisher’s requests. However, this led to lack of recognition from the public which in turn caused Blake to suffer from severe depression which he battled with for several years.  Even those people close to him believed him to be insane.  In fact Blake’s work received far more public acclaim after his death.

Unlike many other painters of his time, Blake liked to work on a small scale, in fact the majority of his engravings are little more than inches in height.

He died in August 1827 and was buried in an unmarked grave at Bunhill Fields, London.

Categories: European Artists, Exhibitions, Watercolour Facts.

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Tracey Emin

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February 1, 2011

One of the more modern artists to be displayed at the forthcoming Watercolour Exhibition at Tate Britain is Tracey Emin.

She has had an eventful career and it is often not her art work which puts her in the public eye (for example, everyone remembers her drunk appearance on a Channel 4 television programme in the UK in the late nighties) but she is probably only second to Damien Hirst in terms of being a so called YBA (Young British Artist) and her watercolours are amongst some of her best work.

Emin was born a twin in Croydon, London in 1963, but was brought up in Margate by her father and step mother.  Her father abandoned the family home when she was still young and this lead to a decline in their standard of living which Emin portrays in a number of her works.

She initially studied art in Maidstone before returning to London to complete her MA in painting at the Royal College of Art.

She is now an accomplished artist in many different mediums including needlework, sculpture, drawing, photography but it is her watercolour painting that we are particularly interested in.

Emin’s first display of watercolours was known as the “Berlin Watercolour” series (1998) which she displayed in her Turner Prize exhibition in 1999 and also her New York show ‘Every Part of Me’s Bleeding’ held the same year.  These are colourful watercolours which Emin painted whilst in Berlin in 1998 and include 4 portraits of her face and were adapted from Polaroid photos.  Each painting in this series is unique but shares the same title “Berlin The Last Week in April 1998″.  Emin is quoted as saying that she included the set of Berlin watercolours in the Turner Prize exhibition in response to remarks that there are no paintings submitted for the Turner Prize.

Over the last ten year’s, Emin’s focus on painting has developed and amongst her bestknown works are the Purple Virgin (2004), Asleep Alone With Legs Open (2005), The Reincarnation series (2005) and Masturbating (2006), which are all along the same theme of depicting her naked with her legs open.

Categories: European Artists, Exhibitions, Watercolour Facts.

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