While watercolour is traditionally associated with the enthusiast and amateur more than the professional artist – a prejudice that has also included women who were thought to dabble with the technique as a genteel pastime rather than a serious commitment – such narrow-mindedness is well and truly confounded in this exhibition that contains some surprising and often thrilling images.
Watercolour demonstrates that artists working with the technique could produce art that was as skilful and challenging as that rendered in oils.With such a broad generic approach, covering a period of some 800 years, Watercolour takes a wide approach and a wide categorisation, defining the technique as any work produced in any water-based medium, whether made using the conventional tablets of finely ground colour – enjoyed because it was highly portable – as well as powder and acrylic.
Such an all-embracing definition raises the issue of “truth to materials”, in whether watercolour is truly about washes of translucent colour sensitively overlaid to create luminous effects, or used as a “solid” medium to create opaque images that at first glance could be created in oils.Artists such as Turner used the technique brilliantly to capture the atmosphere in a way that is almost ethereal in responding to the weather. The clouds and the swirling suggest a sense of change, the white surface of the paper is almost as important as the pigment.
By contrast, other artists were concerned with the opacity of watercolour, often aiming for meticulous detail, as in John Frederick Lewis’ Harem Life, Constantinople, which, as the title suggests, evokes the sensual mood of the women’s private chamber. One woman lies languidly on a settee playing with a cat, while another looks on, her image reflected in a mirror. The open window admits a gentle light. Starting in the medieval period, the exhibition begins with early, exquisitely illuminated manuscripts and intriguing maps, covered with delicate washes of colour.
This early work should serve as a correction to the general view that watercolour did not flourish until the mid-18th century, when it was taken up by artists, many using the technique as a portable process that could be easily be taken aboard ships or used in the open air to render freely interpreted landscape. Skilled and sharp-eyed naturalists used watercolour to document the exotic flora and fauna of plants and animals. This was carried out, among other tours, on Captain Cook’s voyages.Artist in the 20th century adopted an altogether freer approach, whether because watercolour could be carried out for sketches or because, unlike the slow drying oils, it offered a quicker way of working.
During the Second World War, artists used watercolour as a way of approaching the devastation of the conflict. In particular the facial damage was graphically detailed by artists such as Sidney Hounswick. Edward Burra, who was physically weak, used watercolour to produce a series of expressive, large-scale images of war that evokes the terrifying conflict. In Soldiers at War, carried out on three sheets of paper, Burra responded to the horror of war with a theatrical, nightmare-like panorama of larger-than-life figures.
The final room devoted to the exhibition is more personal and includes Ithel Colquhoun’s schematic erect penis, but other work is often less effective. Anish Kapoor combines earth, PVA and gouache, his abstract composition concerned with the material itself, while Lucia Nogueira uses watercolour and ink to create a still life that is private and closed. With some 200 works, arranged chronologically, there are breathtaking images alongside those that seem heavy and laborious, particularly when set against the lightness of the medium. Like any medium, success lies in the hands of the individual artist – and may well encourage many to take up the challenge of watercolour.
