English landscape watercolor painting, a perfect marriage of genre and medium, entered a lively period of experimentation in style and content during the second half of the nineteenth century, with rich and diverse results. Through all the changes of style and technique and all the debates over the appropriate use of the medium, it was watercolor's ability to convey the timeless truth and reality of the natural world that mattered to artists, critics, and audiences. British watercolors of the Victorian period continued to observe an essential humility before nature; they remain fresh and compellingly immediate because they derived in the first place from the artists' heartfelt communion with the elements of nature. Victorian Landscape Watercolors begins with a consideration of the continuing influence of the great generation who earlier in the century, during the extraordinary parallel rise of watercolor and landscape painting, had established the landscape watercolor as a major British contribution to the arts. The second chapter examines the role of the landscape watercolor in the aesthetic thought of John Ruskin, whose critical voice played a dominant role in shaping that art. The third chapter looks at the place of landscape within the watercolor societies and its development as it appeared in their annual exhibitions. The final chapter deals with the tug of new and old, foreign and native in the later Victorian period. The book also features 126 watercolors, from public and private collections in America and England, all reproduced in full color and accompanied by individual commentaries. Among the 76 artists represented are David Cox, Sr. and Jr., Walter Crane, William HolmanHunt, Edward Lear, Samuel Palmer, James Mallord William Turner, James McNeill Whistler, and Ruskin himself, along with dozens of lesser-known masters of the medium. Victorian Landscape Watercolors is published in conjunction with the first exhibition to survey this period of this particularly British contribution to the arts; the exhibition, organized by the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, will also be seen at the Cleveland Museum of Art and in Birmingham, England.

The Victorian era gave rise to some of the most beautiful and extraordinary watercolours ever painted. With their meticulous technique and discreet purpose, they convey much about the romantic and moral temperament of the age. This volume is the first general introduction to what was a particularly popular medium in the Victorian era and was, in fact, the preferred form of expression for many artists. Through his discussion of subject matter and stylistic development, Christopher Newall provides a fascinating insight into the artistic sensibility of the period. Featuring full-colour masterworks by such major figures as Ruskin, Burne-Jones and Rossetti, along with many lesser-known but respected talents and analyses of both the individual works and the way in which they contributed to the stylistic development of the medium during the period, this is a valuable addition to the scholarship on Victorian art.

The author discusses the development and characteristics of Victorian painting, setting them within the context of time. He covers the multifarious facets of painting styles, from social realists to fairy painters, whilst not neglecting traditional areas such as marine, landscape, sporting and animal. The various artistic movements- aesthetic, classical, romantic - are all considered. The book combines a study of the two mediums of oil and watercolour in a single volume.

A fresh perspective on British landscape drawing in the Victorian and Modern eras. The attempts by artists of the Victorian and early Modern period to convey not merely the physical properties of a landscape but also its emotional and spiritual impact - landscape as 'places of the mind', as the critic Geoffrey Grigson put it - is the focus of this fascinating new study of British watercolours produced between 1850 and 1950. Drawing on the British Museum's impressive collection, this book explores artists' spiritual quests to capture the essence of landscape and convey a sense of place. Artists of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries drew on earlier traditions but developed and extended the genre through their imaginative, personal responses to the artistic, cultural and social upheavals of the time. The book includes works by Victorian artists Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Poynter and by many well known twentieth-century artists, such as John and Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore, some of which have never previously been published.

?This catalogue presents a rich selection of Victorian drawings and watercolors from the important collection of The Courtauld Gallery, London. It features many previously unpublished works, ranging from informal preparatory drawings for paintings and sculptures to highly finished exhibition watercolors. The selection includes life studies, landscapes, genre scenes, and portraits as well as subjects from literature.

English artists have made a unique contribution to the art of watercolor painting. In no other Western country has this very attractive medium been used so consistently, or for works of such stature, as in England between 1750 and the present day. In this general survey of the whole period, Graham Reynolds, formerly Keeper of Paintings and of Prints and Drawings at the Victoria & Albert Museum, discusses the paintings of over 100 artists including the well-known watercolorists such as Cozens, Girtin, Cotman and De Wint, as well as artists who are equally known for their work in other media - Gainsborough, Turner, Constable, Sargent, Henry Moore. The 140 illustrations, 64 in color, show the work of these and lesser-known artists and reveal the versatility of this medium, so the reader will be introduced to its use for illustrative caricature and portraiture as well as to the finest examples of traditional landscape watercolors.