The development of British landscape painting in water-colours — John Shaqi
The development of British landscape painting in water-coloursFinberg, A. J. (Alexander Joseph)
History
The development of British landscape painting in water-colours
Finberg, A. J. (Alexander Joseph)
Landscape painting, British; Watercolor painting, British
The works of these painters of poetical landscape taught the public to
demand something more emotional in feeling and more dignified and
impressive in treatment than the prosaic transcripts and conventionally
composed drawings of the topographers. Their example also taught the
rising generation of artists, amongst whom we find Edward Dayes
(1763-1804), John Glover (1767-1849), Joshua Cristall (1767?-1847), F.
L. T. Francia (1772-1839), Thomas Girtin (1775-1802), J. M. W. Turner
(1775-1851), John Constable (1776-1837), and John Sell Cotman
(1782-1842), how to meet those demands.
In Turner’s _Warkworth Castle_ (V. and A. Museum), exhibited in 1799,
and Girtin’s _Bridgnorth_ (British Museum), painted in 1802, we find
these two streams of influence uniting. These drawings are at the same
time both topographical and poetical; each represents a particular place
with a good deal of accuracy, but in such a way that the drawing might
just as correctly be called a poetical landscape as a topographical
representation.
This combination of fact with emotion, of representation with poetry,
has remained during the whole of the nineteenth century and down to the
present day the dominant characteristic of British landscape painting.
Sometimes the topographical factor was subdued or almost submerged, as
in the water-colours of George Barret, junr. (1767-1842) and Francis
Oliver Finch (1802-1862), but it is generally predominant, though always
in combination with emotional or poetical expression, in the works of
William Havell (1782-1857), David Cox (1783-1859), Peter De Wint
(1784-1849), Copley Fielding (1787-1855), G. F. Robson (1788-1833),
Samuel Prout (1783-1852), William Hunt (1790-1864), Clarkson Stanfield
(1793-1867), David Roberts (1796-1864), J. D. Harding (1797 or 8-1863),
R. P. Bonington (1802-1828), T. Shotter Boys (1803-1874), J. Scarlett
Davis (1804?-1844), J. F. Lewis (1805-1876), W. J. Muller (1812-1845),
William Callow (1812-1908), Birket Foster (1825-1899), A. W. Hunt
(1830-1896), E. M. Wimperis (1835-1900), Tom Collier (1840-1891), and J.
Buxton Knight (1842-1908).
The course of development of the subject-matter of British landscape
painting in water-colour we may, therefore, say has been somewhat as
follows: it started with the object of recording as clearly and
accurately as was possible the appearance of buildings and places, and
it did this, not for purely artistic reasons, but in the interests of
antiquarian, archæological, historical, or geographical information; by
the side of this place-recording activity there sprang up a series of
painters who aimed at the production of landscapes as the means of
artistic and emotional expression; we then find these two groups acting
on each other, the poetical school teaching the topographers style,
design, “atmosphere,” and emotion, and the topographers directing the
attention of the poetical painters to the observation and study of
nature and the expression of
[Illustration: PLATE II.
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