The Practice of Water-Colour Painting

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The Practice of Water-Colour Painting

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO

Painting in Water-Colour

PAINTING IN WATER-COLOUR

There are certain definite and perfectly intelligible reasons for the particular character of the development through which the art of water-colour painting has gone in this country. The continuity of this development, its steady progress stage by stage, and its consistent advance from small beginnings to results of the greatest possible importance, cannot by any means be ascribed to chance; there has been a sequence of causes each of which has had its full effect in directing the evolution of the art and in shaping its characteristics. All these causes have left their mark in turn upon the work which has been produced by successive generations of water-colour painters, and they have all helped in the building up of the traditions by which the art is controlled to-day.

It is undeniably true that all forms of artistic production are appreciably influenced by the conditions under which the producers work, and by the surroundings in which they find themselves. Locality plays a part of no little importance in determining the style and manner of an art and in fixing the way in which it should be practised; indeed, the popularity and success of many technical processes are directly due to purely local circumstances, which have affected mechanically or æsthetically the whole trend of artistic expression. For instance, in Japan the main principles of a very characteristic architectural style have been decided by the necessity which exists there of being always prepared for the possibility of an earthquake; the more solid building construction suitable to other countries would there be inconvenient and even dangerous. Again, in India, the traditional carvings, with their delicate elaboration of detail and unusual lowness of relief, are evidently designed with consideration for the strong and sharply defined shadows cast by a tropical sun. Similar examples of the connection between local conditions and artistic development could be multiplied; they are common enough in the record of the art of the world.

Therefore, it is not unreasonable to seek to account for the remarkable growth of the British water-colour school by reference to the influences to which it has been subjected here. Among the chief of these influences is that of climate; the humid, insular atmosphere in which we live is peculiarly helpful to the water-colour painter in more ways than one. It provides him with a great deal of subject matter that lends itself well to interpretation by means of a dainty and luminous medium – landscape motives that require exceptional subtlety of colour treatment, and atmospheric effects that are exquisitely delicate in their gradations of tone and in their elusive variety of suggestion. It gives him pictorial material that no other technical process can so efficiently translate, and that needs especially for its proper expression the inherent lightness and transparency of the water-colour wash.

But most of all, perhaps, the insular climate helps the water-colour painter by creating the conditions under which the essential properties of the medium can be turned to the best advantage. In air that is moderately damp, water-colour can be far more conveniently handled than in a dry atmosphere which encourages very rapid evaporation. Some of the best results which are within the reach of the water-colourist are obtained by manipulation of the washes and touches while they remain wet, and too rapid drying of his work prevents him from gaining certain qualities of execution which are desirable if not indispensable. The beauty of many of the finest water-colours which have been produced by British artists, their tenderness, their breadth of effect, and their purity of colour, can be ascribed not unjustly to the influence of a favourable climate, and can be claimed as being in some sort the outcome of geographical situation.

However, the personal element has also to be taken into account in estimating the significance of the movement which brought the British water-colour school into existence. The intentions and capacities of the artists who are active in the direction of such a movement, and whose influence is exercised consciously or unconsciously in bringing it under the proper control, have much to do with the completeness of the result which is ultimately attained. We have been obviously fortunate in possessing so many men able to perceive fully and practically the way in which they could profit by the local advantages they enjoyed, and ready to make the best possible artistic use of their natural opportunities. These men were prompt to recognise the genius of the medium with which they had to deal, and to see how well it could be made to serve them in their efforts to reach the highest level of achievement; they did not spend too much time over preliminaries, but proceeded as quickly as possible to build on the foundation they had laid a system of practice which was capable of the widest extension.

Indeed, the experimental and tentative stage with which our water-colour school began about a century ago, lasted for only a comparatively brief period. The earliest British water-colours were chiefly "stained drawings," that is to say, drawings made with the pencil or the pen, to which a suggestion of colour – it was rarely more than a suggestion – was added by means of flat washes. The purpose of these drawings was mainly utilitarian, they were mostly topographical views intended for reproduction by engraving, and they were prepared with more consideration for the engraver's convenience than for the artistic possibilities of the medium employed. They followed, in fact, a narrow and rather feeble convention, and were almost entirely mechanical in manner.

But among the men who were engaged upon work of this class, there were even then some who were anxious to find a wider scope for their individuality. They had some warrant for their belief that the medium was capable of much greater development, because they could refer to the sketches of the older Italian, German, and Netherlandish masters, who had used water-colour occasionally for notes and studies of a purely pictorial kind. Even in England there was a precedent in the water-colour work of Gainsborough, who had made important experiments in this manner of practice. These earlier examples, slight as they were, pointed a direction in which much might be accomplished, and were distinctly inspiring in the suggestions they made to artists who were seeking the way out of a rather dull convention.

It was during the first half of the eighteenth century that the signs of the new purpose in British water-colour painting began to be definitely perceptible. Some of the topographical draughtsmen – the names of William Taverner, Samuel Scott, and John Joshua Kirby may be particularly mentioned – showed a certain inclination towards more personal modes of expression than were customary at that moment. Their attempts to be unconventional were timid enough, but they counted for something as evidences of a desire to substitute the actual study of nature for a dry formality which had in it scarcely any trace of naturalism.

The man, however, who really grasped the necessities of the situation with vigour and intelligence was Paul Sandby. He has been called, with some justice, the father of the British water-colour school, on account of the influence he exercised over his younger contemporaries, and the importance of his intervention in artistic affairs throughout his long life. He was born in 1725, and died in 1809, so that he saw the rise of many of the greatest British masters of water-colour; and as he was busily engaged as a teacher during a large part of his career he can fairly be said to have been directly or indirectly responsible for the striking progress of the art in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The time was ripe for the appearance of a broad-minded and judicious leader who could control the rather vague aspirations of the men around him, and point out to them the way in which their energies could best be applied; and he was exactly the type of leader to fill the position which circumstances had created for him.

For what Sandby especially did was to reduce to order the incoherent rebellion against cramping conventions and deadening formalities which was being started by the topographical draughtsmen. He was himself trained as a topographer and gave a good deal of his life to work of this character, so that he had a thorough experience of water-colour painting of the mechanical kind. But he possessed more fully than any of his immediate contemporaries an original sense of artistic responsibility, and he had, too, the courage to assert his convictions against prevailing custom. He saw that his records of fact could be absolutely accurate and yet be not only personal in manner but also suggestive of nature's variety and charm – that they could be works of art as well as statements of bare realities.

So, as opportunities came to him, he freed himself more and more from the restrictions which hampered his liberty of action as an artist. He made excursions beyond the bounds of topography into imaginative compositions and into pure landscape painting; he sought for and interpreted the sentiment of nature sympathetically and thoughtfully; he learned how to manage his pigments and to make them express effects of colour and tone naturalistically instead of conventionally. He became, in a word, a sincere nature student with the courage of opinions based on serious observation, and with a grasp of technical processes which was sure and confident.

In his development was typified the evolution which was proceeding in the whole of the water-colour school during the period covered by his life. Helped, beyond doubt, by his example and precept, other men were systematising their study, were asserting their independence, and were learning to look properly to nature for inspiration and assistance, not only in choice of subject but, as well, in the manner in which they should treat the subjects they selected. The primitive "stained drawings" lingered on for a while because not all the water-colourists were bold enough to break away from the fashion to which they had grown accustomed, and because, no doubt, not all of them could appreciate the importance of close contact with nature; but when the new movement was once really started it went forward without a check, and gained year by year an ever increasing number of adherents and supporters.

When Paul Sandby died British water-colour painting was in a position very unlike that which it had occupied when he commenced his work fifty or sixty years before. Such artists as Alexander Cozens, and his son, John Robert Cozens, Devis, Hearne, Pars, Rooker, the two Cleveleys, William Payne, and Nicholas Pocock, to mention a few of the many men who were prominent, had helped greatly in raising the standard of practice and had done much to prove to the public that Sandby's estimate of the possibilities of water-colour was in no way exaggerated. But the full manifestation of the strength of the new gospel which he had been preaching came at the beginning of the nineteenth century when those supreme masters, Turner, De Wint, and David Cox, with other eminent painters like J. S. Cotman and Copley Fielding, arrived at maturity. Girtin, a genius who might have been the greatest master of them all, had lived his brief life during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and had died seven years before Sandby; but, even so, he must be reckoned as one of the chief helpers by whom the work of the pioneers was carried to completion, because he showed emphatically his entire acceptance of the æsthetic principles which they laboured so sincerely to establish.

By 1809 the old fashion in water-colour was gone; its restrictions and conventions had no longer any power over the artists and no influence upon the public taste. The few men who were still working in the earlier manner were simply survivals from other days, and had ceased to be in touch with the spirit of the world about them. All the younger artists were in the new movement and were eagerly seeking to prove that they were fully conscious of their responsibility under the improved conditions of the art in which they were interested, and that they understood what were the possibilities of accomplishment opened up to them by the change which had been brought about.

To this eagerness was due a remarkable activity in production as well as an increase in the vitality of the art which was not less notable for its effect upon the popularity of water-colour painting. Societies which concerned themselves only with the advancement of this particular form of practice came into existence, and by gathering round them a host of supporters with genuinely artistic inclinations did much to put the water-colourists more closely in touch with the public. These societies, too, brought into association the men who had the highest qualifications for leadership, whose example and influence could affect most strongly the rising generation of workers, and who could prove by actual demonstration what was the direction in which the popular favour could most profitably be sought. Organisation gave the water-colour school authority and the power to claim consideration, and made it a prominent factor in art politics.

Under these conditions the rise of the greater masters during the first quarter of the nineteenth century came as a natural step in the evolution of the school. They were not compelled, as they might have been years before, to suppress their aspirations under the necessity of making a living by doing mere journeyman work; they were happily allowed a wider scope for their activity, and they found themselves encouraged to move onwards always to the completer expression of their convictions. They had the better type of art lovers on their side, so things went sufficiently well with them.

Therefore it came about that men like Turner, Cox, and De Wint were able to take advantage fully of the opportunities which they enjoyed as water-colour painters living and working in the British Isles. And how they responded to the inspiration of their surroundings can be very plainly perceived in the manner and quality of their paintings. Turner's marvellous grasp of atmospheric subtleties, his infallible understanding of varieties of aerial effect, and his rare skill in representing the spaciousness of remote distances seen through a veil of misty air could scarcely have been acquired so completely in any other country. Great master as he was, and great as he would almost certainly have been in any surrounding, he owed unquestionably the full training of his powers of expression to the large experience of nature in all her moods which came to him as a result of ceaseless observation of the atmosphere of his native land.

The same can be said of Cox, of De Wint, Copley Fielding, Cotman, and of all the other painters who helped to raise water-colour landscape to its great position as an essentially British phase of artistic achievement. Cox's open-air notes with their tender breezy skies, and gleams of sunlight, De Wint's broad, serene, and dignified studies with their large massing of tones, Fielding's luminous landscapes and sea-pieces full of movement reflect absolutely the impressions made by local characteristics upon temperaments sensitive and responsive. In all this work there is a revelation of personal views about the ways in which nature can be interpreted which is exceedingly instructive, and there is also plainly expressed an intention to assert these views with a sincere and intelligent unconventionality. The present-day student of water-colour can learn much indeed about the fundamental principles of the art by analysing the methods and examining the intentions of these earlier masters. He can see how they respected these principles, and how they strove to use the local advantages they possessed to attain the fullest measure of artistic expression; but he can see too that they held themselves free to deal with nature in the way that they personally preferred.

It must be remembered that the artists of this period were tasting the first joys of emancipation. They had thrown aside the earlier tradition as useless and inconvenient, and they were themselves building up a new tradition which was peculiarly fitted to the requirements of the school to which they belonged and capable of the widest application. They had decisively enlarged their view of artistic responsibility, and they had grasped boldly the vital fact that their own personal impressions of nature were the only ones which it was worth their while to set down. So they were introducing into British water-colour painting a sentiment which had been hardly perceptible in it before, a sentiment clean, wholesome, and joyous, which was derived directly from the nature they worshipped and in which there was no taint of either affectation or expediency. Each man had learned to see for himself and to believe in himself; and each one consequently was able to contribute something definitely valuable to the common stock of æsthetic conviction which was to serve as the endowment of the school.

Happily, the spirit of these men did not die with them; as they began so those who succeeded to them continued. To the present day the local tradition and the local sentiment have been maintained unaltered in our water-colour painting. The immediate successors of the first great group of masters were quite as keen in their desire for the advancement of the art in which they were interested, and quite as strenuous in their efforts to carry it forward in the right direction. They sought as sincerely to develop the tradition of serious nature study, and to make a rational and judicious actuality the dominating principle in all their productions. Year by year the outlook of the water-colour painters widened as they found fresh material they could deal with in the manner which they recognised as appropriate and legitimate, and year by year the hold of the water-colour school upon art lovers of the better sort has become more firmly established.

A long list, indeed, could be made of the men who came to maturity during the latter half of the nineteenth century – men who have a right to be reckoned among the masters of water-colour, and whose activities have been both important in themselves and valuable in their effect upon the vitality and progress of the school. Landscape painters like Thomas Collier, A. W. Hunt, W. Callow, E. M. Wimperis, A. W. Weedon, and that admirable student of nature, Henry Moore, whose pictures of sea and sky are of almost unapproachable excellence; figure painters like Fred Walker, G. J. Pinwell, Sir John Gilbert, George Cattermole, E. J. Gregory, and that popular favourite, Birket Foster; animal painters like that superlative master, J. M. Swan, and a crowd of others, whose management of the medium was as skilful as their judgment of artistic essentials was well balanced, must be held in honour as worthy successors of the pioneers by whom the possibilities of water-colour painting were first explored. Of these artists some were simply followers of the earlier masters and, as followers, were content to accept without question the methods as well as the tradition which their masters had handed down to them, but others were seekers after new ways of expression, experimentalists who were anxious to discover fresh applications of the principles by which their art was directed.

The result of this healthy variety of opinion about details of practice has been to keep the vitality of the school at its highest level. Its stability has been ensured by the sober respect which a certain number of the nineteenth-century water-colourists have shown for the example of their leaders, its development has been encouraged by the energy of the other painters who have been seeking to interpret in ways of their own the lessons they have learned, and its future has to all appearance been made safe by the enlargement of its sphere of activity and by the opening up of many new directions in which it can fittingly appeal for popular support. At the present moment British water-colour painting is in a condition of remarkable vigour; it has passed successfully through all its preparatory stages and it has arrived at its full expression without losing on the way any of its freshness or freedom. Certainly it has not become stereotyped; there is no sign to-day of the growth of any prevailing mannerism or of the adoption of any easy convention which will save the artists from the trouble of thinking for themselves. None of the defects, indeed, which are apt to appear in an art movement as it matures have as yet made themselves perceptible, and the sense of initiative among the workers, their desire to do the best with the means at their disposal, and their appreciation of the obligations they incur as exponents of water-colour art are seemingly as much alive as they were in the days when the old "stained drawing" convention was first broken through by the apostles of a new æsthetic creed.

And what is to be the future of water-colour painting in this country? That is a question to which no one can pretend to prophesy an answer. What has been done in the past, what is being done at the present moment by artists of power and distinction can be counted, at least, as increasing definitely the sum total of the art of the world; but it rests with the artists themselves, present and future, to make or mar the school in generations to come. The plain duty of the men of to-day is so to deal with their inheritance that it can be handed on, not merely intact but amplified and improved, to their descendants, who will, we may hope, estimate as highly as we do the treasure that the last century has brought to us. That there is no shirking of this duty to be discovered now justifies the belief that our immediate successors, at all events, will not be able to excuse themselves for any lapse by blaming us for having set them a bad example.

But, naturally, the quality of the progress which is to be made in years to come depends upon the way in which these successors of ours realise the significance of the opportunities which we have provided for them. If they see that the regard for vital principles which is characteristic of our attitude towards the art does not cramp individuality of expression, and that our work, with all its respect for tradition, has been lacking neither in variety nor in sterling originality, they will surely be anxious to tread in our footsteps and to keep their own production on sane lines. So long as they do this there will be no waning in the glory of the British water-colour school.

The almost inevitable result of any relaxation of effort would be the loss of that pre-eminent position which British water-colourists now occupy in the art world. Already the artists of other countries are competing keenly with us and are proving beyond dispute that they understand very well indeed what are the particular principles which govern this painting method. Doubtless they owe much to study of our masters, but they know how to apply the lessons they have learned and how to adapt their knowledge to meet the local conditions under which their work has to be carried on. They have evolved their own way of handling the medium, they express with its assistance the æsthetic sentiment that is appropriate to them, and they have an independence of outlook and manner that absolves them entirely from the reproach of having merely adopted the ideas of other people. It is this independence that makes them such dangerous competitors, for it puts them beside us in the race for supremacy.

In Holland, for instance, there has grown up within comparatively few years a school of water-colourists which has already established a remarkable record of sound and well-considered achievement. It has secured the co-operation of many of the most able of the modern Dutch artists whose paintings are especially memorable for their dignity and breadth of style, and for the admirable management which is revealed in them of the better qualities of the medium. The power and directness of these paintings, their purity of method, and their rightness in summing up the facts of nature give them the strongest possible claim to attention, and in their sincerity of conviction they are comparable with the best of the work that has been produced anywhere else.

That water-colour should be practised with so much success, and with such genuine appreciation of its capabilities, by the Dutch artists is not in any way surprising. The atmospheric conditions in Holland are wholly favourable to the painter in this medium, and help him, as they do in the British Isles, to get the best results from his materials. There is something eminently inspiring in the aerial effects, in the magnificent cloud masses, and in the subtle tone gradations of misty atmosphere which are characteristic of the country, something stimulating in nature's ruggedness and in the vehemence of mood which she is apt to display there; and there is certainly a satisfying variety of pictorial motives from which the artist can make his selection. At present, it may be admitted that the outlook of the Dutch water-colourists is narrower than that of our own men, and that they limit themselves more definitely in their choice of material and in their manner of dealing with it; but a school which has already reached so high a standard of craftsmanship, and which within its boundaries shows so large a measure of artistic intelligence, is capable of wide expansion.

Much excellent work in water-colour is also being produced both in Italy and in France. There is a tendency among the Italians to overdo the crispness of touch and the precision of brushwork which are possible in water-colour painting that concerns itself more with the clever statement of detail than with the suggestion of broad effects, and this tendency is accountable for the production of many things that are brilliant, undeniably, but a little unsympathetic and superficial. But there is also a quite considerable group of Italian artists who are painting both in water-colour and in tempera with a fluent directness of method and a dignified breadth of generalisation that can be frankly admired. In France, too, there is the same tendency towards dry precision, and there are similar exceptions from the prevailing rule – water-colour painters like the veteran, M. Harpignies, who use the medium with judgment and fine taste and with a true understanding of its inherent technical advantages.

Decidedly, if there is now no water-colour school abroad which equals our own in comprehensive understanding of the resources of this form of artistic practice, there is more than one which might conceivably take our place in the future if we allowed ourselves to forget the duty which is imposed upon us by our great traditions, and to sink into mere followers of a convention. We must keep the spirit of the art strenuously alive, we must relax none of our keen individuality in the interpretation of vital principles, we must cherish devoutly the spirit of our artistic ancestors and prove always that we have a full share of their enthusiasm and clearness of purpose. So long as we do this we shall have no reason to fear the competition of any other school of water-colour painting.

Mr. Edwin Alexander, R.W.S, A.R.S.A.

FORTY WINKS

MR. EDWIN ALEXANDER, R.W.S., A.R.S.A.

Although Mr. Edwin Alexander does not confine himself to only one class of subject, he has certainly shown in his water-colour work a preference for the study of animal life. He paints beasts and birds, living and dead, with brilliant actuality, and yet with a fascinating originality of manner which prevents his realism from ever becoming commonplace. His purpose is evidently not to present facts in an obvious way, but to use them, with all possible respect, as the basis for pictorial arrangements in which he can give full play to his sense of design, his feeling for expressive handling, and his love of harmonious colour. The technical charm of his paintings is always beyond dispute, and they have, too, the attractiveness of a personal style which reveals the temperamental attitude of the painter to his subjects.

This attitude is one which he defends logically enough on the ground that it is inexpedient to make laws in the practice of art which define for all time the way in which things should be done. He contends that it is decidedly arbitrary to insist that the method adopted by certain men in the past in dealing with a particular class of material should be imposed as immutable upon all their successors who may wish to handle this same material; and he feels that, as in painting the end may fairly be said to justify the means, an artist should be free to choose for himself the mode of procedure which will bring him most directly to the end that appears to him desirable.

For a number of years past Mr. Alexander has painted upon either unbleached packing paper, or linen, and he has chosen to work in body-colour because it lies better than ordinary transparent water-colour upon either the paper or the linen, both of which are decidedly absorbent. He likes a paper which has a definite tint dark enough to represent the general half-tone of his subject, and in cases where this tint happens to be too light he lowers it by putting a wash over the whole surface before he begins the actual painting of his picture. To start with the general half-tone already stated is in his view a better system than to cover a sheet of white paper, piece by piece, with washes until the tone quality he wants is obtained.