IT has often been said that the English have been preeminent in two branches of the Arts: poetry and watercolour painting. As do all simplifications, that contains a grain of truth, even if poets have been held in suspicion by some English people and watercolour assumed to be a medium for amateurs. The great years of the English School ran from about 1750 to 1850 and the best practitioners gave their work an impact fully equal to oil paintings. I use ‘English’ deliberately here, as, until the 19th century, Scottish and Irish artists were adjuncts to the English School.
The Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars that preoccupied the central years of that period meant the painters’ innovations were achieved in isolation and came as a revelation to their Continental brethren after 1814. Even if one restricts the discussion to Europe, this does not mean that watercolour was a purely English invention; as with many inventions, it had diverse progenitors and was foreshadowed in different times and places. This is what makes the paused display ‘Renaissance Watercolours’ at the V&A Museum so interesting. I was lucky enough to see it before London went into Tier 4, when I was able to enjoy it almost by myself.
Purists of the English School insisted only translucent colours be used, so highlights came through the washes from the paper, rather than an admixture of opaque pigment, sometimes with a white filler such as chalk, known as gouache or body colour. Such rigid discrimination is now long past and, as with so much else, medium is a matter of individual choice. Gouache is itself water-based and represents one of the essential bloodlines of what became watercolour painting.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة January 20, 2021 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة January 20, 2021 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.