Third, a combination of transparent colour and opaque white. This is a most interesting form to use. Shadows are kept trans parent and the light masses loaded. Clever handling and the accidental quality of clear water colour is present in this method.
These three methods are in active use to-day. Clear water colour painting seems capable of expressing more in the way of sheer beauty, atmosphere and power than the other forms.
Figure studies and decorative motives by Albrecht Diirer (1471-1528), Rembrandt, and Claude are important landmarks in the development of the early periods of water colour; also Peter Paul Rubens (1577-164o); Cornelius Dusart (1660-1704* Francis Barlow (1626-1702); and Honore Daumier (1808-1879). This type of drawing formed the basis and beginning of the great art of water colour painting in England, both by nature and climate adapted to this form of artistic expression.
First Period—(1725-1780).—The early period of British water colour development can be dated from 1725-1780. Within this time progress was made and many artists destined to become great were born. The work done during these years was carefully topographical and painstaking. Pen and tint drawings represented their range. Landscape was beginning to be used as a theme in pictorial art, though in a tentative and monochromatic form. Real colour was not understood or used. Colour makers had not appeared on the scene and artists using this medium were obliged to grind and prepare their own colour. When one considers the modern artist and his absolute lack of knowledge of what his colour is made, and how it is prepared, all praise must be accorded to the artists of that time who made almost every kind of material for themselves.
Paul Sandby (1725-1809) laid the foundations of landscape painting in England. His early drawings carried a fine, closely drawn line around the objects used in his compositions. Then an India tint was imposed over parts of this picture. As he gained in knowledge, varied colour was used and the outlines were softened to effect a chiaroscuro. He gradually began to add more and more colour through superimposing hue upon hue, timidly perhaps at first, but building solidly and in advance of his time.
When water colour first emerged from the early monochromatic state, artists of this period sensed its possibilities and began a series of experiments that was destined to restore this medium to its rightful place as a great means of art expression. Samuel Scott
(1710-1772), Michael Angelo Rooker (1743-1801) and Thomas Mahon (1748-1804) were eminent exponents of water colour. Malton painted architectural subjects with great distinction. John Alexander Gresse William Pars (1742-1782) and Francis Wheatley (1748-1801) are representative of the fine art of this time.
John Robert Cozens (1752-1797) produced work of a high order, romantic and imaginative, possibly influenced by Claude, but striking boldly into an undeveloped realm of landscape com position and showing the way to many young artists of this period.
William Blake, Thomas Girtin and J. M. W. Turner were outstanding painters of this period. Blake and Turner were romantic and highly imaginative, leaving the common highway to delve into unexplored phases of painting. In each existed the impulse to subordinate reality and seek romance in colour and design. Blake delved farthest into that unknown world, while Turner roamed in a world of colour, making colour his servant and slave. Girtin painted landscape with a splendid feeling for scale, mass, and atmosphere, holding that simplicity was great art. He was friendly with and undoubtedly influenced many of his younger contemporaries. Turner and Cotman both profited by their association with Girtin.
These painters, each in his way and manner, left a great im press on the art in England, not only on water colour painting, but on the medium of oil. Girtin's impress extends over this entire period and helped to create the modern school of water colour painting. Cotman excelled in clear, limpid, flowing colour.