Watercolor

About

Watercolour uses finely ground pigment in gum arabic, diluted with water and brushed onto paper, where the white of the sheet supplies the light. Water-based paint is ancient, used on papyrus, silk and manuscript pages, but watercolour as an independent medium owes much to Albrecht Dürer, whose landscapes of the 1490s are startlingly fresh.

It became a national speciality in Britain in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Thomas Girtin, J. M. W. Turner and John Sell Cotman explored broad washes, wet-in-wet blooms and scraped highlights, and the Society of Painters in Water Colours was founded in 1804. In America Winslow Homer painted the Adirondacks and the Caribbean, and John Singer Sargent painted sunlit Venetian scenes. In the 20th century Emil Nolde and Charles Burchfield found new intensity in it, and in Taiwan Ran In-Ting joined it with ink traditions. Look for granulation, tidemarks and bare paper left for highlights.