Cross-country collaboration

For watercolourists of many nationalities, Italy was inspirational. Work by the country's leading light, Lusieri, proves covetable, as Meissen birds fly high

- Huon Mallalieu

GOETHE'S claim of 1787 that 'in no country has this art'-by which he meant watercolour-been brought to greater perfection than in Italy' might come as a shock to believers in the primacy of the English school. At that date, there was probably only one superlative Italian practitioner, Giovanni Battista Lusieri (17541821). However, it is arguable that had the great man said instead that nowhere had it been brought to greater perfection 'than by British and other foreign artists working in Italy', he would have been nearer the mark.

The example had been set by Claude in the 17th century and, in the second half of the 18th century, Italian light, landscapes and monuments drew together young painters and sculptors from Britain, Switzerland, Germany, France and Scandinavia in what was, effectively, an international art college. They socialised and worked with each other and their Italian counterparts, to the considerable benefit of all. Grand Tourism provided a lucrative market for topographical views that involved open-air work and watercolour was the ideal medium in which to supply them. These artists included John Robert Cozens, William Pars, Francis Towne and John 'Warwick' Smith, together with the Swiss Louis Ducros (1748-1810) and the German Jakob Philipp Hackert (1737-1807), all of whom produced their best or most interesting work in Italy.