DOI Heft:
No. 369 (December 19239
DOI Artikel:Mair, George H.: Contemporary British landscapes in water-colours
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21398#0325
CONTEMPORARY BRITISH LAND-
SCAPES IN WATER-COLOURS. BY
G. H. MAIR, C.M.G. 000
I SUPPOSE that after lyric poetry there
is no art more specially and significantly
British than water-colour painting. Archi-
tecture, the epic, the great forms of a
Rubens, a Michael Angelo or a Leonardo
have rare British analogues. We have only
one Wren, one Milton, and one Watts, but
we have singers by the score, and British
water-colour art with its zest of experiment,
the freshness and variety of its technique,
its tender and imaginative vision, and above
all in its copiousness, its variety, and its
fresh appeal to each generation, is like
nothing else on earth. 000
It would be interesting to speculate why
the pastel should beinEngland an honoured
and handsomely used guest, but a guest
only, and the water-colour be indigenous.
Perhaps the liquid quality of our atmosphere
has something to do with it, the use of a
medium which seemed to match the rain-
fall and the qualities of landscape that
accompany it having a kind of quaint
appropriateness which made it catch on.
Anyhow, it caught on to such purpose
that, as the recent exhibition of Australian
art showed, it is perhaps the only English
method of artistic expression which can be
said satisfactorily to have planted itself in
the Dominions. The flexibility of the
water-colour could not be more perfectly
demonstrated, for Australia—a country
vastly more sunlit, harder and brighter in
its outlines than ours—has adapted it
admirably. Perhaps there is not so much
in the rainfall theory after all. 0 0
We are fortunate at the present moment
in being in the middle of a really rich period
of achievement in water-colour art—a
period of greater fertility in experiment and
dexterity and delightfulness in execution
than has happened since the days of
Turner and Prout and de Windt. Not
only are there the works of painters like
" MOONLIGHT AT LES BAUX.” BY
CECIL A. HUNT, A.R.W.S., R.B.A.
(By courtesy of H. A. Baker, Esq.)
305
Vol. LXXXVI. No. 369.—December 1923.
SCAPES IN WATER-COLOURS. BY
G. H. MAIR, C.M.G. 000
I SUPPOSE that after lyric poetry there
is no art more specially and significantly
British than water-colour painting. Archi-
tecture, the epic, the great forms of a
Rubens, a Michael Angelo or a Leonardo
have rare British analogues. We have only
one Wren, one Milton, and one Watts, but
we have singers by the score, and British
water-colour art with its zest of experiment,
the freshness and variety of its technique,
its tender and imaginative vision, and above
all in its copiousness, its variety, and its
fresh appeal to each generation, is like
nothing else on earth. 000
It would be interesting to speculate why
the pastel should beinEngland an honoured
and handsomely used guest, but a guest
only, and the water-colour be indigenous.
Perhaps the liquid quality of our atmosphere
has something to do with it, the use of a
medium which seemed to match the rain-
fall and the qualities of landscape that
accompany it having a kind of quaint
appropriateness which made it catch on.
Anyhow, it caught on to such purpose
that, as the recent exhibition of Australian
art showed, it is perhaps the only English
method of artistic expression which can be
said satisfactorily to have planted itself in
the Dominions. The flexibility of the
water-colour could not be more perfectly
demonstrated, for Australia—a country
vastly more sunlit, harder and brighter in
its outlines than ours—has adapted it
admirably. Perhaps there is not so much
in the rainfall theory after all. 0 0
We are fortunate at the present moment
in being in the middle of a really rich period
of achievement in water-colour art—a
period of greater fertility in experiment and
dexterity and delightfulness in execution
than has happened since the days of
Turner and Prout and de Windt. Not
only are there the works of painters like
" MOONLIGHT AT LES BAUX.” BY
CECIL A. HUNT, A.R.W.S., R.B.A.
(By courtesy of H. A. Baker, Esq.)
305
Vol. LXXXVI. No. 369.—December 1923.