Watercolor History

Purpose:

To become familiar with the history of watercolor;

To become familiar with various watercolor artists throughout time;

To make connections between watercolor purposes and techniques from long ago to its uses today.

The earliest paintings ever created (cave drawings) were actually water-based pigments as early as before 10,000 BC.

Albrecht Durer is considered the first master of watercolor. He was a German artist who became familiar with water-color landscape painting when he traveled to Italy in 1494-95. His methods are greatly varied; he used the wash technique to create airy, atmospheric landscapes as well as using precise detail to draw objects found in nature.

View of Kalchreuth 1503

Frances Anne Hopkins: The Lumber Raft, Quebec, 1870

Anthony Van Dyck: Landscape, 1632

Watercolor was at its peak in the early 1800s. It had at that point been part of education in British Academies and was being mass produced by Winsor-Newton. In the late 1700s, it became a popular hobby among women to use watercolors to color black and white prints. Even Queen Victoria took watercolor lessons and kept a painting journal, which made it popular throughout the English speaking world.

In the 1970s and 1980s watercolor re-gained popularity along with 19th century art in general. Watercolor painting became a fashionable past time once again for the middle class. Today, there is a wide range of mediums that qualify as watercolors, everything from water-soluble oil paints, to fade-resistant, to gel enhanced.