Exhibition of British water-colours 1850-1914

FOREWORD This exhibition of British Water-Colours, to which His ACKNOWLEDGMENT late Majesty King George VI graciously lent some examples from the Windsor Collection, has also received loans from various public galleries and institutions in Great Britain. Arranged by the Empire Art Loan Exhibitions Society for It is the second of a series of three, and illustrates the work circulation in Australia and New Zealand, this second exhibition of artists who were active during the years 1850 to 1914, a period that presents certain difficulties of selection but is at the of British Water-colours covers the period 1850-1914, the Vic- same time exceedingly interesting. torian and Edwardian eras. Well selected and representative, Its difficulties arise from the fact that it represents a transi- the collection should arouse the keenest interest and be of great tional phase in the history of the art when the work of the earlier educational value, practitioners, who had so just an appreciation of the right use and the limitations of the medium, gave place to a more Included are some pictures from the Windsor Collection, ambitious phase in technique when an effort was made to exalt, graciously lent by His late Majesty King George VI, and the so to speak, water-colour drawings to the rank of oil paintings. various Galleries throughout Britain have also been most It is an interesting period because it provides a curious subject for study, representing as it does a sort of hiatus between generous in lending their works, thereby making the exhibition two eras of outstanding excellence in which heights were possible. Thanks are due to Mr. Chisman and the Committee reached that have gained for the British School of Water- colours its undoubted pre-eminence. and Staff of the Empire Art Loan Exhibitions Society for organis- The earliest workers in the medium used it merely to ing the exhibition, and to Mr. Ernest Blaikley for supplying the enhance their wash or pencil drawings, which 'ere mostly topographical and often executed for engravers. Then came Foreword. Paul Sandby, who has been called the Father of English Water- colour, and he led the way to a development of the art; and with Girtin, Turner, Bonington and the Masters of the Norwich ROBERT CAMPBELL, School, we reach the full flower of expression in the medium. o,tra1uw Regional Director o f t h e J;.A.L. ES . There is, perforce, a certain amount of over-lapping in the 1)eliOdS into which we have s o m e w h a t a r b i t r a r i l y divided our three exhibitions. Into the earlier years of our present Period come David Cox, T. Shotter Boys, Samuel Prout and others who, in their different spheres, provided such excellent work in the best tradition. The Pre-Raphaelites were also producing work o f a highly individual and r o m a n t i c n a t u r e , w h i c h b r o k e away to a c e r t a i n e x t e n t f r o m the accepted forms. And then a remarkable change in taste took place. There was a demand for more "finished" work and the artist was expected t o p r o d u c e f o r h i s wealthy and P1'OSl)('l'Otls patrons