The History of the American Watercolor Society

0

August 22, 2011

The American Watercolor Society (originally known as the American Society of Painters in Water Colors) is a nonprofit membership organisation devoted to the advancement of watercolor painting in the United States.

The organisation was founded in 1866 by a group of eleven artists who met in Gilbert Burling’s studio in the New York University Building and their purpose was singular – to promote the art of watercolor painting in America. Obviously, this was intended as a way of combating the feeling of many artists, as well as non-artists, who viewed watercolor only as a sketching medium.

Minutes of First Meeting - December 5 1866

Among those present were Samuel Colman, who was elected as the Society’s first president, William Hart, William Craig, and Gilbert Burling and one of their first actions was to plan an exhibition, which was held at The National Academy in conjunction with the Academy’s own winter exhibition of 1867-68.  The relatively young society profited hugely from the endorsement of the highly respected National Academy and it was the first truly watercolor exhibition in America. It opened on December 21, 1867, and remained open to the public for three months.

 

Requirements for membership to the Society were rigid, although the number of painters in watercolor was still relatively small. The Society wished to keep the quality of it’s membership high, but many top painters hesitated to join, because women had been allowed membership.

When William Hart, NA, became president of the Society in 1870 there were two categories of membership. They consisted of artists who lived within the city, called “Active Members,” and any others were known as “Associate Members.” This second category consisted of artists not residing in the city, and amateurs i.e. anyone whose major source of income was not based upon sales of their art work. This meant that non-resident artists were in the same category as amateurs. It is possible that this categorisation was based upon the prejudice that anyone living outside New York City could not possibly be as fine an artist as one residing within the city limits.

 

Categories: American Artists, Watercolour Facts, Watercolour Societies.

Tags: , , , , ,

The history of a watercolourist’s materials – Part 2

0

August 14, 2011

In the 2nd part of our ‘History of a watercolourist’s materials’ we are going to look at the development of the artists’ paper, brushes and other tools.

Brushes and Other Tools

The brush of choice for a watercolourist was the Asiatic marten or Russian sable due to it’s fine hair which meant that it came readily to a point in the mouth, held a large amount of colour, and flexed against the surface of the paper.  All in all a ‘sable’ watercolour brush provided it’s painter with a pliant, firm, and durable material for applying colour.  The handles for watercolor brushes were first made from quills, and later, metal-ferruled wooden shafts.

Additional tools became common to watercolour painters during the nineteenth century, when “reductive” painting techniques flourished.  These tools consisted of:

  • scrapers, sandpaper, penknives, brush handles, or fingernails – used to remove dry or wet colour from the surface of the paper to create highlights
  • sponges, brushes, bread crumbs, or bits of paper – used to blot watercolour washes and soften their intensity

Paper

The production of wove paper in the late eighteenth century laid the groundwork for future technical advances in watercolour painting. Earlier paper had retained the parallel laid lines of their paper-making molds, thereby causing wet watercolour washes to pool, whereas the wove paper exhibited virtually no impression of it’s fine, wire-mesh molds, allowing painters to apply smooth, precise washes of watercolour without interruption.

Wove paper appeared in a published book as early as 1767, and was immediately sought out by artists. By the 1780s, James Whatman had developed a wove paper ready-sized with gelatin for use with watercolours. Over the course of the nineteenth century, a staggering array of watercolour papers of various sizes, textures, and surfaces emerged to meet the expanding techniques of the medium and by 1850, the leading manufacturer Whatman offered papers with three distinct surfaces:

  • “HP” (or “hot pressed”), suited to detailed subjects
  • “Not” (or “not hot pressed”), suited to less precise work, and
  • “Rough” (or “cold-pressed” or “unpressed”), suited to sketchy effects.

A fourth option, “Griffin Antiquarian,” produced in conjunction with Winsor & Newton, offered a very large sheet of extraordinary strength. The trend for extremely tough surfaces that could withstand great amounts of scrubbing, rinsing, and scraping continued through the nineteenth century, culminating in J. Barcham Green & Son’s “O.W.” paper, a gelatin sized pure linen board developed by the painter John William North in 1895, and certified by the Royal Watercolour Society.

To prevent thinner papers from ‘cockling’ when dampened by the application of watercolours, artists typically stretched them taut. Initially, they pasted or pinned the edges of a dampened sheet to an ordinary drawing board, but in later years, they clamped it to a commercially manufactured stretching board which were popular as they lent works-in-progress something of the aspect of a picture framed for exhibition.

Categories: Watercolour Facts.

Tags: , , , , ,

The history of a watercolourist’s materials – Part I

0

August 7, 2011

We have provided numerous biographies on this site for famous watercolourists from the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of watercolour in Britain (mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century) but we haven’t really made any mention to the materials they used, and the rise of watercolour painting as a serious medium really progressed hand-in-hand with the improvement and development of it’s materials.  So over the next few posts, we are going to give you a brief history of a watercolourist’s materials, starting first with the most important one, the paint:

Paints

Initially, artists ground their own colours from natural pigments, or else bought paint in liquid form.  However in the last two decades of the eighteenth century, artists could purchase small, hard cakes of soluble watercolour which they dipped in water and rubbed it onto a suitable receptacle to produce the paint.

From the 1830s, artists could buy moist watercolours in porcelain pans, and an even greater advance arrived in 1846, when moist watercolors in metal tubes was introduced, following the example of tubed oil paint which was first sold in 1841. The machine-ground pigments pioneered by British manufacturers, Winsor & Newton produced fine, homogeneous watercolors that set the international standard.

In 1834, Winsor & Newton introduced their patented zinc oxide pigment “Chinese White”.  This superfine, permanent color greatly improved the qualities of gouache. In the first half of the nineteenth century, JMW Turner instituted the practice of applying diluted “Chinese White” as a wash and in the second half of the nineteenth century, Pre-Raphaelite painters used white gouache as a ground upon which to paint in a precise, miniature-like style.

Paintboxes

By the middle of the eighteenth century, British artists regularly sketched outdoors so their materials had to be portable.  At first, artists made their own carrying cases – a typical example of which would have been a pocket-sized ivory case with compartments for paints, brushes, a porte-crayon (a drawing instrument that holds pieces of chalk), and compasses. Later on, artists were able to purchase ready-made boxes, the most luxurious of which were constructed of mahogany, fitted with brass hardware and embossed-leather linings and provided porcelain mixing pans, wash bowls, storage tins for chalks or charcoal, trays for brushes, porte-crayons and scrapers, blocks of ink, and of course colours. Less expensive alternatives were also available for the increasing number of amateur artists – the pocket-sized “Shilling colour box” in japanned tin offered pan colours and compartments for mixing, along with separate tin water vessels that clipped to the edge. Commercially available from the 1830s, the colour box became a Victorian bestseller (more than 11 million units sold from 1853 to 1870).

In our next post we will look at the development of paper, brushes and other tools.

 

Categories: Watercolour Facts.

Tags: , , ,

Artist John Knapp-Fisher marks 80th birthday with exhibition

0

August 2, 2011

John Knapp-Fisher is one of the best-loved artists of the Welsh coast and today, 3rd August 2011 he celebrates his 80th birthday.  And to mark this milestone birthday, John’s about to stage one of his biggest exhibitions yet, which he has been working towards for the last two years.

Knapp-Fisher was born in 1931 in London.  After studying graphic design at Maidstone College of Art, John first worked as an exhibition designer in London and it was here in 1958 that he began to concentrate  on painting and exhibiting.  He later became the set designer for the Theatre Royal Margate and the Castle Theatre Farnham.

He moved to Pembrokeshire in West Wales in the mid 1960s, and his lifelong love of boats and the sea – he built them, sailed them and later lived aboard one for several years – is reflected in much of his subject matter, as is his love of the Pembrokeshire landscape.  Indeed, his name has become synonymous with Pembrokeshire landscape painting and his work is highly sought after – he has exhibited widely in Britain and abroad, including mainland Europe, Africa and North America, and has developed a large and loyal following.

Today his work is represented in many public and private collections, including National Museum Wales, the National Library of Wales and The Contemporary Art Society for Wales.

Talking about his forthcoming 80th birthday exhibition, John says “I think this collection is one of my best as I’ve been working towards it for two or three years. I shall not be going on to have too many more big shows – I’m more interested in retrospective shows now.”

The exhibition, which will consist of almost 50 paintings will be shown at the Martin Tinney Gallery, Cardiff from 4 to 27 August 2011.  As well as some of the striking white-washed cottages for which he’s become famous, the latest collection will include scenes of Pembrokeshire as well as images of London and the Suffolk coastal town of Aldeburgh where he once lived.

 

Categories: English Artists, European Artists, Exhibitions, Watercolour News.

Tags: , , , ,