Watercolours
A painting method that employs pigment suspended in a water-based solution, usually applied onto paper.
Though its earliest origins are thought to be prehistoric, its history is usually dated from the Renaissance, when it was used by artists such as Albrecht Durer.
While it may be used as for the creation of preparatory studies, it is also an art form in its own right, and is a technique used for botanical illustration, wildlife illustration and topographical painting as well as traditional genres, particularly landscape.
Nothing small about miniature prices
11 June 2007THE market for early English portrait miniatures received a sizeable fillip in London last week. The auction record was broken twice within the space of 24 hours with the sale of two iconic images of major figures in British history and this was backed up by a crop of other strong prices for top flight examples from the 16th and 17th centuries.
Sir John Soane’s view of Bucks… all the way from Guernsey
23 October 2006“A MOMENT of European importance” is how architects acknowledge Tyringham Hall in Buckinghamshire. It is one of the greatest country houses designed by Sir John Soane (1753-1837), the leading architect of his generation.
Found in the attic: Benjamin money
25 July 2006Four Beatrix Potter watercolour Christmas cards, recently discovered in a Wiltshire attic, will be sold by Highworth, Swindon auctioneers Kidson-Trigg on September 20. The cards have been consigned by descendants of the original recipients, Elizabeth (1888-1977) and Elinor (1886-1979) Lupton.
Ravilious high and dry at £76,000
18 April 2006Works by Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) are only very occasionally seen on the market. So when this evocative watercolour Salt Marsh was offered at Sworders (15% buyer’s premium) sale in Stansted Mountfitchet on April 11 it attracted at least seven interested parties.
Rediscovered Blake watercolours will be sold in New York in May
27 February 2006A cache of William Blake watercolours, unearthed in a Glasgow bookshop five years ago, are to be sold in New York after attempts to keep them together in the United Kingdom have failed.
First Fleet folio sails to record treaty sale
08 November 2005Dreweatt Neate Fine Art have arranged a major private treaty sale to the National Library of Australia, on behalf of a prominent UK family, of a historically important folio of watercolours.
He went on to inspire the Shire
27 July 2005Long before J.R.R. Tolkien settled down to write The Hobbit, he had acquired a postcard reproduction of the ink, watercolour and gouache painting Der Berggeist (The Mountain Spirit).
The watercolour effect
31 May 2005The rainbow plate seen above right comes from an 1814 first issue* of David Cox’s Treatise on landscape Painting and Effect in Watercolours, an oblong folio work that incorporates a hand-coloured aquatint frontispiece and 31 plates (15 coloured, 15 in sepia) as well as 24 soft ground etchings.
The re-emergence of the lost royals…
19 April 2005In November 1933, the Queen Mother (then Duchess of York) wrote to Charles Edmund Brock (1870-1938), a noted illustrator and society painter, commissioning a family portrait.
Legacy casts new light on an Orientalist
08 March 2005INCLUDED in Potburys’ (12.5% buyer’s premium) sale in Sidmouth, Devon on February 8 and 9 was a 75-lot collection of pictures by the Orientalist painter Charles Robertson (1844-91) consigned from his granddaughter’s estate. They appear to have been the works that remained in the family after the artist’s Godalming studio was sold off following his death from a heart attack aged 47.
Rabbit returns
04 January 2005Executed in the 1890s, when Beatrix Potter was working for the greetings card firm Hildesheimer, this little ink and watercolour drawing was last seen at auction in London about ten year ago, but on December 1 it came back to Christie’s South Kensington and sold for £25,000.
CHRISTIE’S - Le Pavillon de Chougny
23 December 2004Christie’s King Street (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) were pulling out all the stops for their first full week of the month.
...and, illustrating the point
22 December 2004“Business has been good, but to achieve this I have had to work extremely hard.” This is how Chris Beetles summed up 2004 and, having already taken over £500,000 in sales from his renowned annual exhibition of British illustrators, he is ending the year on a bullish note.
RA fairs news at the double
20 October 2004NEXT year’s Watercolour and Drawings Fair will move to a new venue, the Royal Academy rooms at 6 Burlington Gardens, London W1, where it will run from February 3 to 6 with an opening evening preview on February 2.
Kupka’s factory job
14 October 2004THE Mira Jacob Collection sale at Bailly-Pommery-Voutier & Sotheby's (23.92 - 14.35% buyer's premium) included a smattering of drawings and watercolours by artists outside the dealer’s sphere of influence – from a small Picasso ink sketch of a Glass and Jar, bought in at €44,000, to a Degas pencil portrait of Thérèse Degas, 11 x 8 1/2in (28 x 22cm), which sold at a quadruple-estimate €77,000 (£52,400).
Local knowledge reveals the miniature secrets
29 September 2004SOME canny detective work by both the auctioneer and the buyer seems to have come up with answers to most of the questions surrounding this intriguing unsigned mid-19th century miniature on ivory, right, offered by Neales (15% buyer’s premium) of Notttingham on September 9. The 4 x 3in (10 x 7.5cm) miniature, presented in its original Victorian frame in a glazed easel display case, had been entered by a private vendor who had no idea of either sitter or artist.
Nelson twice remembered in miniature and pottery
22 September 2004JAMES Sillett was a jobbing artist from the Norwich School of painters, who worked on a broad spectrum of projects including heraldic painting and stage scene decoration, but he is best known as a competent miniaturist.
Newbury's work at Bourne Gallery
16 September 2004THIS year marks the 200th birthday of the Royal Watercolour Society and many past members, such as William Callow (1812-1908), have been masters in portraying the detail and differing surface textures of building.
Seeing cats and getting kicks
01 September 2004BACK in London, Chris Beetles of Ryder Street in St James’s has just opened his amusing annual show of cat pictures, which, as always, features an important group of works by the world’s most famous exponent of the genre, Louis Wain (1860-1939).
Will Pitcher be revealed to more marine fans now?
01 September 2004DESPITE having success in his day, it seems a major oversight that marine artist Neville Sotheby Pitcher (1889-1959) does not make it into the specialist reference books such as E.H.H. Archibald’s The Dictionary of Sea Painters.
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