THE PRACTICE and CRITICAL RECEPTION of WATERCOLOUR TECHNIQUES in ENGLAND 1850-1880 Volume 1 Fiona Mann
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Oxford Brookes University: RADAR BRUSHING THE SURFACE: THE PRACTICE AND CRITICAL RECEPTION OF WATERCOLOUR TECHNIQUES IN ENGLAND 1850-1880 Volume 1 Vol. 1 only uploaded (main text); vol. 2 (illustrations) not uploaded due to copyright restrictions. Bound copies of complete thesis available for consultation from Oxford Brookes University Library Fiona Mann The degree is awarded by Oxford Brookes University This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the award of Doctor of Philosophy June 2011 ii Abstract Twentieth-century art historical research has devoted little attention to the study of watercolour painting techniques and artists’ materials. This is especially true of the period following Turner’s death, when watercolour is said to have been in decline. Yet the period 1850 to 1880 was a period of intense innovation and experimentation, when watercolour painting finally came to be accepted on an equal footing with its rival, the medium of oil. The expansion of annual exhibitions brought dazzling, highly finished works to the attention of the new middle-class buying public, who eagerly scanned the latest press reviews for news and guidance. For the first time, I combine unpublished material from sources including nineteenth- century colourmen’s archives, conservation records and artists’ descendants’ collections, with an analysis of contemporary watercolour manuals and art critical writing in the press, to give a picture of the dramatic changes in technique which occurred at this time. Brilliant new pigments and improved artists’ papers and brushes flooded onto the market via a growing network of artists’ colourmen. Affordable instruction manuals, aimed at the swelling ranks of amateur artists, were published, their successive editions highlighting the changing character of watercolour practice, in particular the growing use of bodycolour, microscopic detail and new tube pigments. Progressive artists such as John Frederick Lewis, Samuel Palmer, Myles Birket Foster, John William North and Edward Burne-Jones, developed revolutionary ways of incorporating the new artists’ materials into their watercolours, often to great commercial success. Exhibition reviews by critics in the growing number of journals often commented loudly on the bright colouring, minute detail, texture and opaque effects produced by their use of the latest pigments, papers and brushes. The impact made on watercolour painting by improved artists’ materials was far- reaching, bringing power and status to a medium which had previously been considered an inferior artform. iii Contents VOLUME 1 Acknowledgements 1 List of illustrations 2 Introduction 14 PART ONE NEW ARTISTS’ MATERIALS Chapter 1 Developments in Artists’ Materials 1850-1880 28 1.1 Suppliers in London: the rise of the colourmen 28 1.2 New nineteenth-century pigments: ‘Fruits of the fecundity of 34 modern chemistry.’ 1.3 ‘Paper made by hand of every practicable size, quality of 39 surface, and tint of colour’: new developments in papermaking. 1.4 From sable quill to ‘brights’ and ‘fans’: the watercolour brush 46 1.5 Mediums and fixatives 49 1.6 Portable sketching equipment 52 1.7 Conclusion 52 Chapter 2 ‘Shilling vade-mecums:’ Watercolour manuals and the 60 promotion of new materials 2.1 The impact of new pigments 64 2.2 The legitimacy of Chinese White 68 2.3 The ‘Paper Question’ 70 2.4 Brushes: Quills or new metal ferrules? 73 2.5 Crayons, fixatives and watercolour megilp 75 2.6 Conclusion 77 PART TWO WATERCOLOUR PRACTICE – FIVE CASE STUDIES Chapter 3 John Frederick Lewis 1804-1876: ‘The Painter of greatest 82 power, next to Turner, in the English School’ 3.1 Lewis’s early years 83 3.2 ‘The subject, the manipulation, the peculiar colouring, were 85 alike novel and singular’: Lewis’s Watercolours After 1850 3.3 New pigments supplied by Roberson 89 3.4 Japanned boxes, brushes and gum arabic from Roberson 91 3.5 Paper supports used by Lewis 92 3.6 Lewis’s use of Chinese White 94 3.7 Conclusion 96 Chapter 4 Samuel Palmer 1805 – 1881 101 4.1 The early watercolours: ‘timidity of execution’ 102 4.2 ‘Sunbeams in a crucible’: the impact of new pigments on 104 Palmer’s later watercolours 4.3 A late adoption of Chinese White 107 4.4 Vehicles, gums, additives and crayons 108 4.5 Palmer’s brushes 110 4.6 Palmer’s watercolour supports: an ‘intermediate between 111 paper and ivory’ 4.7 Conclusion 113 Chapter 5 Myles Birket Foster 1825-1899 119 5.1 Three sources on Birket Foster’s pigments 121 5.2 Foster and Chinese White 125 5.3 Foster’s choice of paper and board supports 128 5.4 Brushes, lay figures and gum arabic 130 5.5 Chromolithographs and forgeries 131 5.6 Conclusion 132 iv Chapter 6 John William North 1842-1924: ‘Painter and Poet’ 136 6.1 Beginnings as an illustrator 138 6.2 North’s later technique 142 6.3 North’s use of new pigments 145 6.4 Chinese White 147 6.5 North and the drive for a ‘practically imperishable’ paper 148 6.6 Brushes and other materials 150 6.7 Conclusion 150 Chapter 7 Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones 1833-1898 154 7.1 Blurring the boundaries: ‘His drawings are literally in 156 tempera, and in substance and surface might almost be mistaken for oil’ 7.2 1857-1860 158 7.2.1 Watercolours completed 158 7.2.2 Pigments purchased from Roberson 159 7.2.3 Supports and other materials 161 7.3 1861-1865 165 7.3.1 Watercolours completed 165 7.3.2 Pigments purchased from Roberson 167 7.3.3 Supports and other materials 170 7.4 1866-1870 171 7.4.1 Watercolours completed 171 7.4.2 Pigments purchased from Roberson 172 7.4.3 Supports and other materials 175 7.5 1871-1880 178 7.5.1 Watercolours completed 178 7.5.2 Pigments purchased from Roberson 179 7.5.3 Supports and other materials 180 7.6 Conclusion 182 PART THREE CRITICAL RECEPTION 187 Chapter 8 ‘All sorts of unnecessary and unpalatable impertinencies’: 188 Critical responses to watercolour painting, methods and materials 1850-1880 8.1 The critics 190 8.2 Anonymity: ‘an inflexible rule for journalists’ 191 8.3 Background, training and prejudices 194 8.4 Critical language and professionalism 196 8.5 ‘The agencies which endow great colourists with a power that 198 is absolutely without limit’: critical writing on new pigments 8.6 ‘Every variety of substance and surface, from the smoothness 203 of an ivory tablet to the roughness of a brick and plaster wall’: critical writing on new papers 8.7 Critical writing on new fixatives, mediums, brushes and 206 portable equipment 8.8 ‘It has, indeed, been rather revolution than evolution, and the 208 whole change may be ascribed to the use of opaque white’: critical writing on the use of bodycolour. 8.9 ‘More stitches than cloth’: critical writing on manipulation 211 8.10 Reviews of watercolour and drawing manuals 217 8.11 Conclusion 222 Conclusion 231 Bibliography Bibliography 243 v Appendices I Nineteenth-century definitions of terms 254 II Dates of introduction of new nineteenth-century pigments 261 III Colours listed in watercolour catalogues 1849-1879 266 IV Roberson Archive – Materials bought by John Frederick 270 Lewis 1852-1875 V Palmer’s expanding use of pigments between 1830 and 1856 273 VI Samuel Palmer’s recipe for Blake’s White, 1866 274 VII Myles Birket Foster’s palette – three sources 275 VIII J. W. North watercolours 1854-1880 276 IX Year-by-year analysis of Burne-Jones’s purchases from 280 Roberson 1857-1880 X Art critics of periodicals and papers 1850-1880 293 XI Some watercolour and drawing manuals reviewed by the Art 298 Journal, the Athenaeum and The Graphic VOLUME 2 Illustrations 1-191 See pages 2-13 for a full listing and sources of the illustrations in vol. 2 of this thesis 1 Acknowledgements Over six years, many people have given generously of their time and resources to help me in my research. I would especially like to thank the following: John Foster and Steve Milton (descendants of Birket Foster and J.W. North) for generously allowing me access to unpublished family records, paintings and art materials; Anthony Oxley of Laurence Oxley, Alresford; Jane Colbourne, Northumbria University; Carol Jacobi, Birkbeck College; Marie-Therese Maine and Ana Flyn, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle- upon-Tyne, and Piers Townshend, Tate Britain, for their advice on technical subjects; Tim Craven, Southampton City Art Gallery; Sarah Mulligan, Newcastle City Library, and Rebecca Watkin, Preston Museum and Art Gallery, for taking photographs for me of works in their collections; my second supervisor, Dr. Matthew Craske for his guidance; Catherine Hilary, Curatorial Fellow at the Watts Gallery; Charles Noble, Chatsworth House, for allowing me private access to Palmer’s watercolours in their collection; and the staff at the following institutions: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; Bristol Museum and Art Gallery; British Museum; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Hamilton Kerr Institute, Cambridge; Museum of London; Tate Britain; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Winsor & Newton, Harrow; and the Wingate Foundation and the Stapley Trust, for their much- valued awards. Last, and by no means least, I owe an enormous debt to my supervisor, Dr. Christiana Payne, for her unceasing patience and encouragement, and to my husband, Nic, and my children, Harriet and Jason, for their love and unfailing belief in me. Abbreviations: Hardie Hardie, Martin, Water-colour Painting in Britain, 3 vols., London, 1966-68. Harley Harley, R. D., Artists’ Pigments 1600-1835: a study in English documentary sources, 2nd revised ed., London, 2001.