May 9, 2012
In a recent article we had a good look at the gallery within a casino – the Bellagio’s purpose built exhibition space within the casino on Las Vegas’ famous strip. Las Vegas would of course normally be regarded as a haven for those who prefer to play Keno, Roulette, Poker, Blackjack and Craps. As we don’t want to give the impression that Las Vegas is something of a desert (no pun intended) in relation to art, we though we’d have a look at what is possibly Vegas’ best known art gallery.
Las Vegas has grown at an amazing speed in the past half-century which should give the reader some impression of the type of environment that existed in this desert location in 1950. So it took some far-sighted art visionaries to plan what would later become the Las Vegas Art Museum. The first step was to create the Las Vegas Art League which was soon housed at the City-owned Lorenzi park ranch house.
Here it remained, away from the gambling areas of the strip until 1974 when it was renamed the Las Vegas Art Museum (LVAM). Unsurprisingly it was the first fine arts museum not just in Las Vegas but in the whole of Nevada.
Las Vegas Art Museum
In the mid-1990s the LVAM was ejected from it’s original home but offered a space in the planned Sahara Library and Fine Art Museum. Completed in 1997, this is a striking building which certainly does justice to the art which is contained inside. During this era it had a short affiliation with the Smithsonian Institute in the early years and was able to display work by Rodin and Dale Chihuly.
Now to the sad news – the LVAM shut it’s doors early in 2009 citing a lack of resources. Las Vegas as a whole has suffered as a result of the faltering global economy – even the gaming tables of the casinos have noticed a fall in tourist numbers and expenditure – so a reduction in the museums income is no great surprise. The slightly cheerier news is that the LVAM hopes to reopen when the economy improves.
Categories: Watercolour Facts.
Tags: casino art gallery, dale chihuly, las vegas art gallery, las vegas art museum, lvam, nevada art gallery, smithsonian
May 9, 2012
If there’s one thing you don’t expect from a mega-casino resort on Las Vegas’ famous strip, it’s that there will be an art gallery inside. It’s also fair to say that this is no afterthought – the gallery space was clearly incorporated as part of the design as if whoever was building a gigantic casino and hotel also wanted to make a statement about art. In fact that’s not quite true – the original gallery was sited in the Conservatory area; where the art is now displayed was once an space reserved for CEO Steve Wynn’s personal collection.
The Bellagio opened in 1998 and could perhaps be described as the first mega-casino resort. It’s also possibly the most recognisable Las Vegas casino for those who’ve never been to the city in the desert. It’s famous fountains are recognisable from the closing scenes of Ocean’s Eleven and the aforementioned Conservatory area featured Julia Roberts from the same film.
Other parts of the building also contain some astonishing pieces of art so if you don’t feel ready to pay to get into one of the exhibitions you don’t have to. The lobby ceiling contains an amazing glass sculpture by American artist Dale Chihuly – it consists of 2000 hand-blown glass blossoms which are suspended 18 feet in the air. Chihuly’s work can also be spotted in the Baccarat Lounge, the Conservatory and the Botanical Gardens.
Dale Chihuly's Bellagio Sculpture
Exhibitions are fairly regular at this casino and that’s a statement you don’t hear very often – it’s a little way off but from January next year there will be a Monet exhibition here. Entitled Claude Monet: Impressions of Light, it will feature 20 works by the French Impressionist which will be loaned from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Also on display will be paintings by some of Monet’s contemporaries such as Eugene Louis Boudin, Camille Pissarro and Jean-Baptists-Camille Corot.
Perhaps an art gallery in a casino is not so strange – why should Blackjack and Poker players not appreciate art? Why would those at the Roulette wheel or the Craps table not want to take in a Monet exhibition after some hours gambling? Of course there’s no reason so next time you’re in Vegas check it out, even if you’re preference is something more profitable.
Categories: American Artists, Watercolour Facts.
Tags: bellagio art gallery, casino art gallery, casino gallery, dale chihuly ballagio, las vegas art gallery, monet exhibition, steve wynn
September 29, 2011
Rowland Frederick Hilder was an English marine and landscape artist and whilst he may not be as well known as Turner, he has still gained the reputation of being ‘the Turner of his generation’.
Hilder was born on 28 June 1905 in Greatneck, New York, where as a child he caught his first glimpse of pictures hanging on walls when his father took him to the mansions of the resident millionaires. When the First World War broke out in 1914, the family decided to sail back to England. A perceptive schoolmaster recognised that Hilder had a natural talent for drawing and set him on the road to Goldsmith’s College School of Art in London where he studied in the 1920s.
He decided early on that watercolour painting was what appealed to him most, however he could find no one to teach him so he taught himself, by studying the classic English masters. Hilder went on to become a distinguished painter of oils and watercolours, as well as illustrator for numerous books including Moby Dick, Treasure Island and Mary Webb’s Precious Bane.
However his favourite painting country was the rolling northern downland in Kent, from Shoreham eastwards towards Maidstone. He was also a great sailor and kept a coastguard’s cottage at Shell Ness, at the mouth of the river Swale, as his base for marine painting.
Hilder was the first to see the drama and picturesque beauty of the oast-houses in Kent with their white caps and surrounding orchards and he shares with John Constable the distinction of having seen an entire region of England identified with his name and art. The description ‘Rowland Hilder country’ attached primarily to the weald of Kent evokes a landscape as distinctive as ‘Constable’s country’ along the Suffolk Stour.
He died on 21 April 1993 in Greenwich, London and following his death the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, for whom he had served as President from 1964 to 1974, honoured him by instituting an annual Rowland Hilder award in his memory.
Categories: English Artists, European Artists, Watercolour Facts.
Tags: british artist, rowland hilder, rowland hilder country, royal institute of painters in watercolour, watercolor artists, watercolour artists
September 16, 2011
Winner of the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2010
This year’s Sunday Times Watercolour Competition is currently being held at the Mall Galleries in Westminster, London up until this Sunday, 18th September 2011.
Sponsored by Smith & Williamson and The Sunday Times , this prestigious competition, which is now in it’s 24th year, aims to encourage the use of watercolour and water-based media paintings among both amateur and professional artists and there are approximately 100 works being exhibited. The competition is open to all artists born or resident in the UK and there are no age limits for those wishing to enter. The only stipulation is that all the paintings which are entered must have been carried out in the last three years and have not been previously exhibited.
It is one of the only remaining competitions of it’s kind which celebrates the diversity and beauty of the undervalued medium of watercolour and awards a total of £18,000 to artists who demonstrate a high level of skill and creativity, including the introduction this year of the Vintage Classics Prize for Cover Art, generously sponsored by Random House.
Following the exhibition at the Mall Galleries, the paintings will be on display at venues throughout the UK as part of the Smith & Williamson Tour.
And one artist hoping to claim the first prize of £10,000 for his paintings is Philip Ciolina. Unlike most watercolour artists, Ciolina doesn’t look to the landscape for his inspiration, but instead paints a flower, a still life or an interior. His two shortlisted entries are both paintings of roses and were influenced by fragments of poetry from TS Eliot’s Four Quartets. “I don’t illustrate poems,” explains Ciolina. “For me words in poems are like the colours on a palette for a painter. I think painters and poets are the same – they have a big reservoir of images to draw on.”
Well good luck to Philip and all the other entrants and we will bring you details of the winners in our next post.
Categories: Exhibitions, Watercolour Facts.
Tags: 2011 watercolour exhibitions, philip ciolina, sunday times watercolour competition 2011, the mall galleries, watercolor, watercolour
September 13, 2011
Another founder of the American Watercolor Society, who went on to become it’s president between 1870 and 1873, was William Hart.
Hart was born in Scotland in 1823 but was taken with his younger brother, James (who also became an artist) to America by their parents in 1830. Hart began his career as a carriage and ornamental painter in Troy, New York, and his first artistic experience was in decorating the panels of coaches with landscapes. He also spent time travelling throughout Michigan as a portrait artist before returning to Scotland to study.
By the time he returned to America, Hart had shifted his energy to landscape painting. In 1848, he exhibited his first work at the National Academy of Design where he became an associate member in 1855 and a full member in 1858. In fact he continued to show his paintings there regularly through the mid 1870s. He also exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association and at major exhibitions around the country.
Like most of the major American landscape artists of the time, Hart settled in New York City, where he kept a studio, working out of the 10th Street Studio Building from 1859 to 1870. His mature landscape style embraced the mannerism of the late Hudson River School by emphasizing light and atmosphere and he became particularly adept at depicting angled sunlight and foreground shadow.
However, as strong as Hart’s technical abilities were, he was also known for his prolific and occasionally formulaic paintings of cows. Cattle were a popular motif in Hudson River School art, and nearly every artist included them in at least some of their landscapes but some artists, including William and his brother made a speciality of cow portraits. These paintings, which were very popular with late-19th-century American collectors, typically featured several cattle grazing or watering in the foreground or middle distance with the landscape playing a supporting role.
Hart died at Mount Vernon, New York in 1894 but a collection of over 400 sketches, water colors, and sketch books which were retained en masse from the artist’s studio after his death are now held at the Albany Institute of History & Art.
Categories: American Artists, Watercolour Facts, Watercolour Societies.
Tags: american watercolor artists, american watercolor society, james hart, watercolor artists, watercolour artists, william hart
September 7, 2011
As highlighted in our last post, Samuel Colman was one of the founders of the American Watercolor Society and became it’s first president between 1867 and 1871.
Colman was born in Portland, Maine in 1832 and moved to New York City with his family as a child where his father opened a bookstore. It is thought that the literate clientele that the bookshop attracted is one of the main reasons Colman developed his artistic talent.
He is believed to have studied briefly under the Hudson River school painter, Asher Durand, and he exhibited his first work at the National Academy of Design in 1850. By 1854 he had opened his own New York City studio, and the following year he was elected an associate member of the National Academy, with full membership bestowed to him in 1862.
'Storm King on the Hudson'
His landscape paintings in the 1850s and 1860s were heavily influenced by the Hudson River school – a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose work mainly depicted the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area. Colman is himself probably probably best remembered for his paintings of the Hudson River and one of his best-known works is his ‘Storm King on the Hudson’ (1866), now in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Musuem in Washington, DC.
However Colman was also a keen traveller, and many of his works depict scenes from foreign cities and ports. He made his first trip abroad to France and Spain in 1860-61, and returned for a more extensive four-year European tour in the early 1870s in which he spent much time in Mediterranean locales. Colman often depicted the architectural features he encountered on his travels such as cityscapes, castles, bridges, arches, and aqueducts.
Colman’s artistic activities became more diverse late in life. He became skilled at the medium of etching and published popular etchings depicting European scenes. By the 1880s he worked extensively as an interior designer, collaborating with his friend, Louis Comfort Tiffany. He also became a major collector of decorative Asian objects, and wrote two books on geometry and art.
Colman died in New York City on 26 March 1920.
Categories: American Artists, Watercolour Facts, Watercolour Societies.
Tags: american watercolor artists, american watercolor society, samuel colman, storm on the hudson, watercolor artists, watercolour artists
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: american watercolor artists, american watercolor society, samuel colman, watercolor artists, watercolour artists, william hart
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: watercolor brushes, watercolor painting, watercolor paper, watercolour brushes, watercolour painting, watercolour paper
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: history of watercolour materials, history of watercolour paint, watercolor, watercolour
July 26, 2011
Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding, commonly called Copley Fielding was an English painter who was famous for his watercolour landscapes. In fact Fielding came from an entire family of artists but he was the most well-known.
He was born on November 22 1797 in Sowerby Bridge, near Halifax, England and at an early age he became a pupil of John Varley (see previous post entitled “John Varley – Watercolourist & Drawing Master”). He even went on to marry Varley’s sister-in-law in 1813.
In 1810 he became an associate exhibitor in the Old Watercolour Society and then three years later a full member. He went on to become the President of this Society, later known as the Royal Watercolour Society, in 1831, a position he held until his death (see previous post about the “History of Royal Watercolour Society” for more information). In 1824 he won a gold medal at the Paris Salon alongside John Constable and Richard Parkes Bonington.
Like his teacher before him, Fielding also engaged largely in teaching the art but unlike John Varley he made ample profits.
Copley Fielding’s paintings were always highly popular with purchasers as he was an artist of much elegance, taste and accomplishment. Early in his career he specialized in scenes of Wales and the Lake District, occasionally in oil colour but his preferred medium was always watercolour. He was enormously prolific and much of his later work is repetitive.
From 1817 he spent much of his time on the south coast because of his wife’s health, and turned increasingly to seascapes and marine subjects. He died in Worthing, Sussex on March 3 1855.
Today, specimens of his work from 1829 to 1850 can be seen in the water-colour gallery of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London as well as other major museums. Among the engraved specimens of his art is the ‘Annual of British Landscape Scenery’ published in 1839.
Categories: English Artists, European Artists, Watercolour Facts.
Tags: anthony vandyke copley fielding, british artist, copley fielding, royal watercolour society, watercolor artists, watercolour artists
July 10, 2011
Beach at Rhyl
David Cox was one of the most important figures in British Art during the so-called ‘Golden Age of Watercolour painting’ with a reputation for his fresh, lively landscape paintings and was considered by his contemporaries to be rivalled only by Constable in his portrayal of nature’s moods and the British weather.
He was born on April 29 1782 in Birmingham, UK and he initially studied drawing with Joseph Barber and also Fieldler, a painter of miniatures. Following Fieldler’s suicide he went on to become a scenery painter at Birmingham Theatre Royal and at Astley’s Theatre in London where he moved to in 1804 and took lessons from the celebrated watercolourist John Varley. While living in London he married Mary Ragg, the daughter of his landlady and in 1808, the couple moved to Dulwich. At the same time, he abandoned scene-painting for the theatre, and took up watercolour painting for which he was to become so famous.
Whilst he exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy from 1805, his paintings never reached high prices, so he earned his living mainly as a drawing master.
By 1810 he was elected President of the Associated Artists in Water Colour and following the demise of the Associated Artists in 1812, he was elected as associate of the Society of Painters in Water Colour (the old Water Colour Society). He was elected a full Member of the Society in 1813, and exhibited there every year (except 1815 and 1817) until his death.
Between 1814 and 1827 he was based in Hereford where he taught at a girl’s school. He moved back to London in 1827, and was by this time quite well-known as a painter of landscapes. In 1826 he toured France, Holland and Belgium and, in 1829 and 1832, returned once more to France. Between 1844 and 1856 he made annual visits to North Wales where he made some of his finest watercolours. In 1841 he moved to Harborne, Birmingham where he lived and painted until his death in 1858.
David Cox also had a son of the same name who followed his calling as a watercolour painter. He was born in Dulwich and educated in Hereford. He exhibited in London from 1827, although today he is known mainly through association with his father.
Categories: European Artists, Watercolour Facts.
Tags: british artist, david cox biography, royal institute of painters in watercolour, royal watercolour society, watercolour artists
June 8, 2011
In our last post, we provided you with a brief history of the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS), and we made reference to another society calling themselves the New Society of Painters in Water Colours, who would go on to become the Royal Institute of 
Painters in Water Colours (RI).
Like the RWS, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours is one of the oldest societies of professional watercolour painters and both societies were started at a time when the Royal Academy was refusing to accept watercolours as a suitable medium for serious artistic expression, despite its use by many highly regarded painters.
The RI was inaugurated in 1807 as an alternative to the RWS, who only exhibited the work of its own members. From the start the RI showed the work of non-members’ alongside that of members and their exhibitions attracted some of the foremost watercolourists of the time including David Cox, Peter De Wint, William Blake, Samuel Prout, Paul Sandby and Joseph Powell. Financial problems caused them to fold in 1812 but in 1831, Joseph Powell, with several like minded artists, resurrected the New Society of Painters in Water Colours but unfortunately they decided to abandon the policy of exhibiting together both non-members and member’s work thus losing a vital component of the difference between themselves and the RWS.
In 1863 the New Society became the Institute of Painters in Water Colours and two years later a new group of watercolour painters was inaugurated, known as the Dudley, whose exhibitions were open to all-comers thereby filling the gap left when the New Society closed their doors to outsiders. In 1883 the Institute and the Dudley joined forces and this amalgamation saw a significant change in the Institute’s exhibition policy, and after many years of exhibitions limited to the work of members only, the RI once again opened their doors to all comers, a policy still followed today. It was in 1885, by command of Queen Victoria, that the Institute was able to add the prefix ‘Royal’ to its title.
Categories: European Artists, Exhibitions, Watercolour Facts, Watercolour Societies.
Tags: new society of painters in watercolour, royal institute of painters in watercolour, royal watercolour society
May 30, 2011
Bankside Gallery - Home of the 'RWS'
In one of our previous posts entitled ‘Royal Watercolour Society Exhibition – A Year in the Life of the Royal Albert Hall’ we touched on the work of the Royal Watercolour Society and we thought it would be a good idea to give you a bit more history on the world’s oldest watercolour society.
Founded in 1804, essentially the Royal Watercolour Society originated as a protest group of watercolour artists who felt they were being poorly represented by the Royal Academy and were dissatisfied by the way in which their watercolour pictures were hung disadvantageously amongst the oil paintings. Also, the Royal Academy would not elect as their president an artist who painted only in watercolour.
This renegade group of artists therefore decided to form their own society for watercolours only and hence the Watercolour Society was born.
Another society calling itself the ‘New Society of Painters in Miniature and Watercolour’ was set up a couple of years later, and from this time the original group was called the ‘Old’ Watercolour Society, however later on they were given permission by Queen Victoria to use ‘Royal’ in their title, hence the name today ‘The Royal Watercolour Society’.
Founder members included John Varley, Joshua Cristall and George Barratt who were painters of landscape mostly in the Old Master tradition. Within a few years, David Cox, Peter de Wint and Copley Fielding joined the Society, bringing much needed vitality. As time went on artists such as William Hunt, Miles Birkett Foster, JF Lewis and Samuel Palmer also became members, and the society flourished. There was no coherent ‘RWS style’ and it was not a school of painting in the sense of the French or Italian schools.
Instead it was simply a society that many of the finest painters in watercolour of the time wanted to join, whose only relation to each other artistically was the fact that they had elected each other to membership. This tradition of electing members remains in place today and new members are elected by the current Membership of the Society based on the quality of their work alone.
Categories: European Artists, Exhibitions, Watercolour Facts, Watercolour Societies.
Tags: bankside gallery, royal watercolour society, watercolor artists, watercolour artists
May 10, 2011
It might not be a name you’re familiar with but J.W.S. Cox was an innovative watercolorist who’s claim to fame was ‘inventing’ and exploring the full possibilities of the wet-on-wet watercolor technique; in other words immersing paper in water and painting wet watercolor pigments on to the wet paper, so that the pigments could spread and take on a life of their own with some fascinating results.
So what more can we tell you about this artist? Well, he was born in 1911 in New York and was the son of an architect and his artistic tendencies were evident from an early age. He graduated from Pratt Institute in New York City in 1933 and despite having to work at various jobs during the Great Depression, he still found time to study the works of some of the famous watercolorists at the time including Turner and Cezanne.
In 1936, Cox got his first break when he went to Paris to study at the Academie Colarossie and also with ‘Fauvist’ artist, Othon Friesz, but found this style too sloppy. So in 1938 he returned to Boston and entered the Eliot O’Hara summer classes and by the end of that year, he had illustrated a historical novel ‘Listen for the Voice’. In 1939 he joined the Art Department of Boston University where he taught huge classes of students how to paint in watercolor, and established a studio in Rockport, where he developed his “sponge painting” and palette-knife watercolor techniques.
Wanting to remain “his own man” and not paint commercial pictures, Cox developed a unique and individual style, and despite becoming a member of various societies, including the Boston Watercolor Society and the American Watercolor Society, he shunned publicity and preferred to paint rather than socialise.
In summary, Cox was a ‘Renaissance Man’ and as well as being a great artist and travelling the world painting scenes few had ever seen, he can also be accredited with being a teacher, art school administrator, illustrator and lecturer. He was once quoted as saying his goal was “to present myself and the soul of nature as truthfully and with as much inspiration, vitality and freshness as is possible, through the medium of watercolor.”
He died in Florida of a heart attack in 1982.
Categories: American Artists, Watercolour Facts.
Tags: american watercolor artists, j.w.s. cox, watercolor artists, watercolour artists, wet on wet watercolor technique
May 1, 2011
The Royal Watercolour Society represents the finest watercolour painting in Britain. Established in 1804, it is the oldest watercolour society in the world, and is second only to the Royal Academy of Art in it’s importance as an art society.
The Society has defined a watercolour to mean “a painting in a water-based medium on a paper-based support”. This allows the work by the Members, who are all elected by their peers, to embrace both established and experimental practices and the Royal Watercolour Society exhibitions reflect these different approaches. These exhibitions are held twice a year, in the spring and autumn, at their home in the Bankside Gallery but they also hold special exhibitions throughout the year, one of which is currently on at the moment in the Royal Albert Hall.
Royal Albert Hall - Winter
“A Year in the Life of the Royal Albert Hall” is the culmination of a year-long partnership between the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Albert Hall, where for the first time, Members of the Royal Watercolour Society have been allowed full access to the Royal Albert Hall and have been working backstage and behind the scenes to capture the many events that take place there. The result is a collection of large watercolours which are currently being exhibited along the ground floor corridor and tell the fascinating story of a year in the life of the Hall, from it’s various performances and audiences, to it’s staff, restaurants, and even the boiler room!
The exhibition is taking place from 23rd April to 7th June 2011 and can be viewed either when attending a performance at the Hall or by visiting on one of the following free open days, when Society Members will be available to discuss their work and their experience of painting at the Royal Albert Hall.
Saturday 23rd April, 11am – 3pm
Sunday 15th May, 11am – 3pm
Saturday 21st May, 11am – 3pm
Categories: European Artists, Exhibitions, Watercolour Facts.
Tags: 2011 watercolour exhibitions, royal albert hall, royal watercolour society, watercolor, watercolour
April 14, 2011
In a number of our posts, and most latterly in our biography of Paul Sandby, we have made reference to The Royal Academy of Arts so we thought it would be useful to provide a bit of background to this independent and privately funded institution.
The Royal Academy of Arts was founded in 1768 by a group of leading artists and architects under the patronage of King George III. The first Academy was housed in Pall Mall up until 1771 when it moved to Somerset House. It was here until 1837 when the British government took over the rooms for office space and it was therefore forced to share premises with the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. The Academy moved to it’s current location of Burlington House in 1868.
Despite being under Royal Patronage, the Academy did not receive any state subsidies and was very much under the control of the 34 founder Members who essentially established it as a school to train artists in drawing, painting, sculpture and architecture. Amongst the famous watercolourists who trained at the Royal Academy are William Blake and J.M.W. Turner.
One of the other founding principles of the Royal Academy was to provide a venue for exhibitions that would be open to the public and give an opportunity for artists to sell their work to finance their training. Now known as the ‘Summer Exhibition’ , it is held every year (and has been without interruption since 1769) from May to August and has become an important feature of the art world, both nationally and internationally, attracting around 10,000 pieces of work.
Sir Joshua Reynolds - First President of the Royal Academy
Today, the Academy continues to aspire, in the words of its eighteenth century founders, ‘to promote the arts of design’. All of the Academicians are still practising painters, sculptors, engravers, printmakers, draughtsmen and architects and are elected by their peers. The current President of the Academy is the architect, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw and he is only the 25th President in a period of spanning nearly 250 years. Current Members include Norman Foster, Tracey Emin and Anish Kapoor.
Categories: Exhibitions, Watercolour Facts.
Tags: exhibition, j. m. w. turner, Royal Academy of Arts, Sir Joshua Reynolds, watercolor artists, watercolour artists, william blake
April 4, 2011
Paul Sandby was an English map-maker turned landscape watercolourist, who, together with this older brother, Thomas was one of the founder members of the Royal Academy.
He was born in Nottingham, England in 1730 and this is where he first began to work with his brother before they both moved to London in the early 1940s to join the Ordnance drawing room at the Tower of London and train as military draughtsmen.
In 1747, Paul Sandby was given the job as chief draughtsman of mapping the Scottish highlands and it was whilst undertaking this commission that he began to produce watercolour landscapes to document the changes in Scotland after the 1745 rebellion, as well as sketches of important Scottish events such as the hanging of John Young in 1751. And this is when news of his talent began to spread.
In 1752, Paul left Scotland and went to live with his brother, who was then the Deputy Ranger of Windsor Great Park, where together they produced landscapes of the Royal Estates at Windsor; the royal collection alone includes over 500 images painted by the Sandby brothers.
The brothers had much in common as watercolourists, but Paul was by far the better artist and also more versatile in his work. In fact he was singled out by Thomas Gainsborough, who himself declined a commission from at least one of his patrons who wanted views of his country estate with the words, “with respect to real views from nature in this country…Paul Sandby is the only Man of Genius…who has employed his pencil that way”.
But in addition to the topographical views, Sandby was also concerned with elevating the regard in which landscape was held at the Royal Academy, and he therefore painted many large imaginary views in watercolour which he wanted to be hung alongside oils on the walls of the Academy and the homes of his patrons.
He died in 1809 and was described in his obituaries as “the father of modern landscape painting in watercolours”.
Categories: European Artists, Watercolour Facts.
Tags: paul sandby biography, thomas gainsborough, watercolor artists, watercolour artists
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.
Tags: american, american watercolor artists, watercolor, watercolour
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.
Tags: french artist, paul cezanne, watercolor, watercolour, watercolour artists
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.
Tags: amateur artists, english, watercolor, watercolour, watercolour challenge
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.
Tags: british artist, john constable, watercolor, watercolour, watercolour artists
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.
Tags: british artist, exhibition, watercolor, watercolour, william blake
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 best
known 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.
Tags: british artist, exhibition, tate britain, tracey emin, watercolor, watercolour
January 25, 2011
Another artist whose work will be shown at the forthcoming Watercolour exhibition at Tate Britain is Patrick Heron.
Little is probably known about this English painter, writer and designer. He was born in in Leeds, Yorkshire in 1920. His father was a clothes manufacturer and the family moved around a lot in Heron’s early years, eventually settling in Welwyn Garden City where his father founded the firm, Cresta Silks. It was whilst working for Cresta Silks that Heron designed his first silkscreen and in fact he continued to design for his father’s company for almost twenty years.
In 1937, Heron attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London on a part time basis but liked to return to the West Country to visit one of the places he had lived as child, to draw landscapes. He registered as a conscientious objector during the Second World War and worked as an agricultural labourer for three years, before being employed by the Leach Pottery in St Ives.
The Boats and the Iron Ladder
His first one-man exhibition was held at the Redfern Gallery in London in 1947 and included work such as ‘The Gas Stove’ and ‘The Boats and the Iron Ladder’, which showed the direction his painting was moving towards with the unusual use of colour and complex patterning.
After working as art critic for the New English Weekly and The New Statesman, Heron started a teaching job at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1953 where he stayed for 3 years.
In 1959, Heron won the Grand Prize at the second John Moores Liverpool Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery and surely would even have been successful at anything if he’d tried his luck.
During the Sixties and Seventies, Heron lectured around the world, culminating in his
book, The Shape of Colour in 1978 and a few years later, on a return trip to Sydney, Australia, he produced over fifty paintings while working as Artist in Residence at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
He continued painting right up until his death in March 1999 at the age of 79 and many of his works can be seen at The Tate Collection, London and at Tate, St Ives, Cornwall.
Categories: European Artists, Exhibitions, Watercolour Facts.
Tags: english, exhibtions, patrick heron, tate britain, watercolor, watercolour
January 20, 2011
We are going to focus over the next few weeks on those artists whose work is to be shown at the forthcoming Watercolour exhibition at Tate Britain (see previous article).
First up is Thomas Girtin, who belongs to the early school of English watercolour artists and in fact has been credited as one of the founders of English watercolor painting. With the exception of a series of paintings completed in Paris just before his death, Girtin’s work is exclusive to English scenery and he played a major part in transforming the reputation of watercolour as a medium.
Girtin was born in London in 1775 and was taught how to draw at a young age by Thomas Malton and then became an apprentice of Edward Dayes, an engraver and topographical watercolourist. His early work was exceptional and it was his topographical and architectural sketches in particular which helped to establish his reputation. In 1794 he had his first exhibition of landscape painting at the London Royal Academy and by 1799, Lady Sutherland and the art collector, Sir George Beaumont were amongst his influential patrons.
He married Mary Ann Borrett, the daughter of a prosperous London Goldsmith, in 1800 and it was also at this time he was working with Turner, copying architectural paintings by Canaletto.
By 1801 he was a regular guest at the country homes of his patrons, such as Mulgrave Castle and Harewood House, and his paintings were commanding substantial fees. However, his health was beginning to fail and as we’ve already cited, in spent the last few months of his life in Paris completing a series of watercolours, “Twenty Views in Paris and its Environs”. His final work was a panorama of London painted in oils, called the “Eidometropolis” which received great acclaim.
Thomas Girtin - Self Portrait - 1799
It was a tragedy when Girtin died in November 1802 at the tender age of 27. His control of this medium was greater than anyone who had come before him, and with his untimely demise, one saw the end of the first phase of English landscape painting. This is particularly brought home by the often quoted remark of J M W Turner, “If Thomas Girtin had lived, I would have starved” and reminds us that whilst he was alive, Girtin was the leader and Turner was the follower.
Categories: European Artists, Exhibitions, Watercolour Facts.
Tags: english, exhibitions, tate britain, thomas girtin, watercolor, watercolour