WATER - COLOR PAINTING (AQUA BELLE). The process of painting by means of colors mixed with water and some adhesive, as gum or size, instead of oil. The term is now gen erally used for such painting upon paper whkh shows through as a ground. It differs from gouache painting, in which the color is applied in successive layers, as in oil. The processes of painting in vogue before the introduction of oil colors were, for the most part, varieties of water-color, as, for example, fresco-painting (q.v.), in which water-colors are applied to the wet line of the plaster, and tempera (q.v.). For the technique of painting among the Egyptians, Greeks, and other ancient whose works, although they made use of water-colors, are not aquarelles in the modern sense, see PAINTING, EGYPTIAN ART, etc.
In early Christian miniatures and book illus trations water-color was the medium usually employed. They were designed with the silver point. drawn with the pen, and then colored with light tints. During the Byzantine and Roman. esque periods the more elaborate gouache tech nique was preferred, but the Gothic age saw a revival of the aquarelle. From the treatise of Cennini, a disciple of Giotto, we know that these illuminators had greatly advanced upon their predecessors; they had an elementary knowledge of light and shadow and used about the same variety of colors as contemporary panel paint ers. In the later fifteenth century water-colors were extensively used in the coloring of prints front wood engravings, and to some extent of those from line engravings, a practice which lin gered until the seventeenth century. They were also extensively used during this period in draw ings and in colored sketches by many of the prin cipal masters.
Such, indeed, was the origin of modern water color. It was the custom of Diirer, and certain of the German, Dutch, and Flemish artists, to outline drawings with a reed pen and fill in those outlines with an auxiliary flat wash. Gradually the hard lines were replaced by touches with the brush, and the result was a monochrome in browns, and grays, bistre, or India ink. These
again came to be tinted, and so suggested the full use of colors. Rembrandt often drew in brown, and added dashes of strong color; and Mittens produced something very like modern water color drawings. The modern art became emanci pated from the old traditions by "gradual dis use of the old shadow tint, and imitation of the local color, not alone of the objects themselves. but of every modification resulting from light, dark, half-tint, or distance, a method which at once led to far greater truth and richness than could ever have been attained by merely passing color over the universal shadow tint." The stained drawing gradually gave way to the more perfect tinted drawing. But the tinted style pre dominated till 1790; and it may be said that the water-colors of the eighteenth century were tinted monochromes. Artists who used the stained and tinted manner were Ala1ton (17°_13 ]3f1}), Paul Sandy (1725-1809), often called, though without justification. 'the father of water color art;' also (all in the last half of the eighteenth century) Grimm, Webber. (lovely. Pars, and Rooker. Wheatley, Westall. and Gil pin used water-colors as well as oil. Rowland son, Cristall, llills, Wright, Mortimer, Gresse, Hearne, .1. R. Cozens, and ])ayes greatly pro moted the growing art. Nicholas Pocock (17-19 18:31) displayed a new richness and force. John Smith first advanced beyond the weakness of were tinting. Thomas Girtin (1775.1802) at tained great riehness of tone and breadth; his compositions were grand but simple; he massed fight and shade in broad and sometimes abrupt forms. J. M. \V. Turner (1775-1851) soon dis tanced all his predecessors and eontemporaries, and in his hands water-color painting became a new art. Ile wholly abandoned preliminary tint ing; minute details are imitated in local color; and his work is markoll by breadth, fullness, and warmth, as well as grace. Other important names are those of Valley. Samuel Front, Peter de Wint, Colman, David Cox, Copley Fielding, Hunt, Cattermole, Lewis, Birket, Foster, Ilerkomer, Burne-Jones, Walter Crane, etc.