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 22, 2011
Following on from our last post, here are all the winners of this year’s Sunday Times Watercolour competition.
First prize – £10,000 – John Hunt
John Hunt studied Art and Design at the Hammersmith College of Art in London (1972-76) and later Graphic Design at Reigate College of Art (1986-88). He has worked as a Freelance Illustrator and Lecturer teaching Art in Adult Education. John’s prize winning painting, “A Hill Near Stroud”, was painted on a recent visit to the area with his wife.
'A Hill Near Stroud' by John Hunt
Second Prize – £6,000 – Jonathan Pitts
Jonathan Pitts studied Fine Art at Falmouth College of Art (2002-05) and since then he has had numerous exhibitions. Jonathan is a young and emerging ‘en plein air’ landscape artist. He makes all his paintings outside from start to finish, often in adverse weather conditions.
'Twilight 14/12/10, Pensham' by Jonathan Pitts
Smith and Williamson Cityscape Prize – £1,500 – Dennis Roxby Bott RWS
Dennis Roxby Bott studied at the Colchester School of Art followed by the Norwich School of Art. He became a member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1983. Architecture has provided the inspiration for much of his work. He has had several one man exhibitions and has had work commissioned by the National Trust and Sothebys, among others.
Vintage Classics Prize for Cover Art – £500 – Philip Ciolina
We mentioned Philip Ciolina’s work in our last post. He studied painting at the RCA in London and the Cite International des Art in Paris. He has exhibited internationally (Italy, Spain, Germany and the USA) and his work has been displayed at the Hayward, Barbican, Art First and the Fine Art Society.
Highly Commended – Ruth Berry RWS
June Berry studied painting at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. In 2001 she was elected vice president of the Royal Watercolour Society.
Highly Commended – David Paul Gleeson
David Gleeson is based in Stafford and studied Visual Art at Aberystwyth University.
Categories: English Artists, European Artists, Exhibitions, Watercolour News.
Tags: 2011 winners of Sunday Times Watercolour competition, david gleeson, dennis roxby bott, john hunt, jonathan pitts, philip ciolina, ruth berry, sunday times watercolour competition 2011, watercolour artists
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 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: 2011 watercolour exhibitions, british artist, john knapp-fisher, watercolour, watercolour artists
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 20, 2011
In a few of our previous posts, we have made mention to John Varley in his capacity as an art teacher and the influence he undoubtedly had on his pupils, such as David Cox and Peter De Wint, so we thought it appropriate to learn a little more about this celebrated teacher who was also an excellent watercolourist in his own right.
John Varley was born in Hackney, London on 17 August 1778. His father, Richard Varley, had settled in London after the death of his first wife. For a brief time John Varley was employed by a portrait painter and then, at the age of 15 or 16, he attended an evening drawing school twice a week in Holborn, London run by Joseph Charles Barrow. It was Barrow who took Varley on his first sketching tour to Peterborough from which he was to emerge as a professional painter.
Throughout his career he worked primarily in watercolour and was particularly skilled at the laying of flat washes of watercolour which suited the placid, contemplative mood that he often sought to evoke.
In 1798 he exhibited a highly regarded sketch of Peterborough Cathedral at the Royal Academy and became a regular exhibitor at the RA until the foundation of the Old Watercolour Society in 1805 (see previous article ‘History of the Royal Watercolour Society’).
As one of the founders of the OWS Varley exhibited many pieces there, over 700 drawings in total. In between sketching expeditions to Wales and Yorkshire, he executed topographical views of towns, particularly of half-timbered buildings in Hereford, Leominster, Conway and Chester, drawn in the picturesque idiom of the late 18th century.
As previously mentioned, he also became a highly successful drawing master with pupils including David Cox, Copley Fielding and John Linnell but despite his success he was constantly in financial difficulties.
He died in London on 17 November 1842, aged 64.
Categories: English Artists, European Artists, Watercolour Societies.
Tags: british artist, john varley artist, royal watercolour society, watercolour, watercolour artists
July 14, 2011
If we were to first show you one of Kieron Williamson’s paintings, we think you would be impressed by the standard. However, if we were then to tell you that Kieron is still only eight years of age, we think you would be blown away.
Kieron was born on 4th August 2002 in Holt, Norfolk and was a typical energetic toddler who showed little interest in drawing until he was five years old, when, on the family’s first holiday to Devon and Cornwall, he was inspired to start drawing the boats and scenery. “At the time, they were like the drawings of most five-year-olds” said his mum, Michelle “but he really took off after going to some art classes.”
As time progressed, so did Kieron’s abilities. Whilst his parents, Michelle and Keith were not themselves artistic, they did enjoy art and collected works by Norfolk artists, so, when Kieron started to ask for help with putting paintings together, his parents turned to their local galleries and the artists who exhibited there for help.
During the summer of 2008, aged just six, Kieron used to spend an hour a week with Carol Pennington at ‘The Last Picture Show in Town’ in Holt and whilst Carol’s style was very contemporary and gave Kieron an opportunity to ‘loosen up’, he still kept to his own style.
As Kieron’s work consistently progressed, Michelle and Keith would regularly take it down to the ‘Picturcraft Gallery’ in Holt to get their opinion, and with kind support from Picturecraft, another local artist, Brian Ryder, agreed for Kieron to attend his adults evening watercolour course in 2009. Another huge help in Kieron’s development has been artist, Tony Garner, who offered Kieron pastel workshops and one to one tuition in the Gallery. In August 2009, two days before his seventh birthday, Kieron held his first exhibition and his 16 paintings sold out in 14 minutes, raising a total of £18,200 for 16 paintings. A subsequent exhibition in Holt in July 2010 saw his paintings all sold within 30 minutes, at a total value of £150,000.
Kieron has become a global phenomenon and has been described as a child prodigy. His paintings have sold worldwide, he has interest from over 35 countries and has over 1,800 followers.
Categories: English Artists, European Artists.
Tags: british artist, child prodigy, kieron williamson, watercolor artists, watercolour artists, young 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
July 3, 2011
In our previous posts detailing the history of the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, we referred to some of the founder members of these Societies and in our next few articles, we will provide further background to some of these artists.
First up is Peter De Wint who is probably one of the most important figures in the history of the watercolour medium. His work today is still represented in major public and private collections throughout the world and is one of the most popular and sought after of all the British Romantic watercolourists.
De Wint was born on 21 January 1784 in Stone, Staffordshire and was the son of an English physician of Dutch extraction. In 1802 he was apprenticed to the engraver and portrait painter, John Raphael Smith and in 1806 in visited Lincoln for the first time where he met his future wife, Harriet Hilton as well as John Varley, the celebrated teacher and Dr Thomas Monro, who ran an informal academy for young artists. Both Varley and Munro were major influences on the development of De Wint’s style.
De Wint first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1807, and in 1809 he entered the Royal Academy schools. He was elected an Associate of the Old Watercolour Society in 1810 and was made a full member the following year. By that time, he had also built a very successful practice as a teacher and each summer would be spent teaching at the home of one of his patrons.
In 1812 he became a member of the Society of Painters in Watercolours, where he exhibited largely for many years, as well as at the Academy.
He frequently visited his wife’s home city of Lincoln, and many of his panoramic landscapes and haymaking scenes are set in Lincolnshire. He occasionally toured in Wales, and in 1828 travelled to Normandy.
He died in London on 30 January 1849.
De Wint’s life was devoted to art and he is quoted by his wife as often saying ” I do so love painting. I am never so happy as when looking at nature. Mine is a beautiful profession.”
Categories: European Artists, Watercolour Societies.
Tags: british artist, peter de wint, royal institute of painters in watercolour, royal watercolour society, watercolor artists, watercolour artists
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 22, 2011
Samuel Prout was a painter, draughtsman and writer and is arguably one of the masters of British watercolour architectural painting.
He was born on 17th September 1783 in Plymouth, England and together with his fellow pupil, Benjamin Robert Haydon, Prout was encouraged at an early age to study drawing by Dr John Bidlake, the headmaster of the grammar school he attended in Plymouth. In 1801, he met the topographer and antiquarian, John Britton, who was so impressed with his work, he invited him to London to make drawings of antiquarian subjects and copy works of other artists, including Thomas Hearne, William Alexander and J. M. W. Turner. So in 1803 he moved to London where he met his future wife, Elizabeth Gillespie whom he married in 1810 and together they had four children.
To earn a living for him and his family, he painted marine pieces, took in students, and published drawing books for learners. He was one of the first to use lithography in his artwork but it was not until about 1818 that he truly discovered his niche when he made his first visit to the Continent. His eye caught the picturesque features of the architecture which he went on to record with skill and immediately established his reputation with these Continental street scenes, gaining praise from the likes of John Ruskin, whose work often emulated Prout’s. Ruskin was quoted as saying “Sometimes I tire of Turner, but never of Prout”.
In 1829, Prout secured the coveted position of ’Painter in Water-Colours in Ordinary’ to King George IV and afterwards to Queen Victoria.
Prout is often compared to his contemporaries such as Turner, Gainsborough, Constable and Ruskin, whom he also taught, but whilst Turner concentrated on the beauties of nature, Prout was much more interested by the cityscape. There was hardly a place in France, Germany, Italy (particularly Venice) or the Netherlands where he had not visited, searching out sculptured pieces of stone or antique gables to paint.
He died in February 1852 at his home in London following after a stroke and was buried at West Norwood Cemetery.
Categories: European Artists.
Tags: british artist, samuel prout biography, 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
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
March 23, 2011
John Sell Cotman was a watercolourist and etcher who was born in Norwich, England in May 1782.
He left Norwich at the tender age of 16 to study in London, where he became a member of Dr Monro’s circle and met the painters J.M.W. Turner and Thomas Girtin (both of whom we have previously featured on this website).
Despite having very little formal training in art, by 1800 he was already exhibiting watercolours at the annual Royal Academy exhibition and between 1800 and 1805, he produced some of his best work. In fact his paintings from this period, including the celebrated ‘Greta Bridge’ (circa 1805) are considered to be amongst the finest English landscape paintings of the time as they include some great examples of the classic English watercolour technique and show remarkable boldness and sureness of hand.
Greta Bridge
Unfortunately his work did not bring him much success at the time, so in 1806 he returned to Norwich, where he became one of the the most important representatives of the Norwich School. His work not only depicted the local scenery but also that of France, where he made several trips to and his style of painting in his later years became much more flamboyant. It is thought that he mixed flour or rice paste with his watercolours to produce an effect similar to that of oil painting. In fact, during his career, he did also use the medium of oil to paint in, but this area of his work has definitely been overshadowed by his great achievement as a watercolourist.
In 1834 he moved back to London where he became professor of drawing at King’s College which he was delighted with as he was struggling to make a living at this time just through his paintings and he had found himself in debt.
He held this position at King’s College until his death in July 1842 and for most of the twentieth century, John Sell Cotman even surpassed Turner’s popularity as being the most widely admired English watercolourist.
Categories: European Artists.
Tags: british artist, j. m. w. turner, john sell cotman biography, thomas girtin, watercolor artists, watercolour artists
March 16, 2011
Abstract watercolor paintings have become a mainstream genre of art and a lot of the credit for this has to go to the Russian artist, Wassily Kandisky who accidentally discovered abstract art one day in his studio when he realised that shapes and colours were descriptive on their own and there was no need for definition.
Kandisky was born in Moscow in 1866 but spent most of his childhood in Odessa. Music played an important part in his early life (both his parents played instruments and he also learnt how to play the piano and cello) and this would become an inspiration for some of his later watercolor work, as is apparent from the names of the paintings such as Improvisations, Impressions and Compositions.
In 1886, he enrolled at the University of Moscow where he studied law and economics and he went onto become a successful lecturer at the Moscow Faculty of Law.
In fact he did not start painting until the age of 30 after he had attended an exhibition of French impressionists and was particularly disappointed by Monet’s ‘Haystacks at Giverny’ which he was unable to recognise as a haystack and thought that “the painter had no right to paint in such an imprecise fashion”. He therefore left Moscow in 1896 and went to study art in Munich, first in the private school of Anton Azbe and then later at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich.
It was not long before Kandisky’s talent surpassed the constraints of art school and he soon began to explore his own ideas of painting. Now with the title of ‘founder of abstract art’, his work was exhibited throughout Europe in the early twentieth century but not without controversy among the public, his contemporaries and art critics.
Kandisky was an active participant in several of the most influential and controversial art movements of the 20th century, including the Blue Rider which he founded along with Franz Marc and the Bauhaus. His reputation also became firmly established in the United States and as soon as his work was introduced to Solomon Guggenheim, he became one of Kandisky’s most enthusiastic supporters.
In 1933, Kandisky left Germany and moved to France where he became a French citizen in 1939 and lived the rest of his life until his death in 1944.
Categories: Asian Artists, Russian Artists.
Tags: russian artist, wassily kandisky biography, watercolor artists, watercolour artists
March 1, 2011
As discussed in our previous post, ‘The history of watercolor painting in the United States’, Winslow Homer is considered to be one of the foremost painters in 19th century 
America and a dominant figure in American art.
He was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1836 and grew up in Cambridge. He had no formal artistic training until he became an apprentice to a lithographer. However he disliked lithography work and instead moved onto become an illustrator. He worked from New York for Harper’s Weekly and between October 1861 and May 1862, he was one of their Civil War illustrators. It was from this period that he gleaned the subject matter that ultimately became some of his most outstanding paintings.
After the Civil War, he traveled and studied in Europe for several years before returning to New York where he lived and worked in the famous Tenth Street Studio Building. Much of his early New York paintings reflected his time in Europe, particularly France and the influence the European Impressionist artists had had over him. It wasn’t until 1873 that he actually began to work with watercolor, but most of his acclaimed works are in fact in that medium.
He stayed in England between 1881 and 1882 in a small fishing village on the North Sea coast and it was here that he began doing scenes which were harsher in tone, such as people struggling heroically in landscape and his work here was almost exclusively in watercolor.
After his trip to England, he returned to the States and settled permanently in the secluded area of Prout’s Neck on the coast of Maine, where he liked the solitude and the similarity of this coastline to that he had experienced in England. At Prout’s Neck, he was able to indulge his love of the sea and the coast, and the peace and serenity of the Maine Coast dominated his later work, in contrast to the horror of the Civil War which was captured in his early work.
Homer never married and in the main lived a highly secluded but content life. He died on September 29, 1910.
Categories: American Artists.
Tags: american watercolor artists, watercolor, watercolour artists, winslow homer biography
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 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 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 mythological
scenes, 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.
Tags: albrecht durer, german, watercolor, watercolour, watercolour artists