Water-colour painting is in one sense the most ancient mode of pictorial art. We find examples of it in the tombs of the Egyptians, in the Roman catacombs, and in the houses of Pompeii. Oil painting is, in comparison, a modern process, though the statement that it was only discovered by the Van Eycks in the beginning of the fifteenth century, is now known to be a mistake. The earliest pictures were produced with colours soluble in water and mixed with certain ingredients necessary to fix them. In this way wall paintings were executed in tempera, a process familiar to us as _painting in distemper_. Raphael's cartoons are specimens of tempera-painting on paper, and Mantegna's _Triumph of Caesar_ (Hampton Court) furnish examples of the like process on canvas. The art of water-colour painting was practised by the early Italian and German artists, and by those of the Flemish and Dutch schools. In most of the illuminations of missals, in this and other countries, water colours were used, mixed extensively with body white. Such was the case with the early miniature painters of England, who began by using opaque colours, and gradually advanced to transparent pigments. Notwithstanding the antiquity of painting in water colours, the creation of a School of Water-Colour Art, in the sense in which that term is now understood, belongs to this country. It was not to the tempera painter, nor to the illuminator of missals, nor to the early miniaturist that we owe this modern school. We must look for its germ in the practice of the topographer, who drew ruins, buildings, and landscapes for the antiquary. The earliest of such works were executed in outline with a reed pen. Examples are to be seen in some small pictures by Albrecht Duerer, in the British Museum. The pigments used were transparent, and applied on paper. The earliest of these pictures are in monochrome, black or grey; next, colour was added here and there, and the whole effect was something like that of a coloured print. Such were "the tinted," or "steyned" drawings in which our modern water-colour paintings originated. The early method prevailed for a long time, as may be seen in the historic collection of water-colour paintings at South Kensington, but gradually the art developed, better pigments were used, and, as early as 1790, a marked improvement accrued, which led to the triumphs of Girtin and Turner, and the more brilliant examples of later days. One great advantage belongs to the modern school of water colours--it started from nature, untrammelled by conventional rules or traditions. The early topographers were brought face to face with nature; some of them, like Webber and Alexander, extended their observations to foreign lands; others, finding out the beauties of their own country, were content to copy nature. It remained to our artists towards the end of the last, and early in the present century, to give a new and higher character to water-colour art, which from obscure