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The invention in 1900 by Eastman Kodak of the Brownie camera, selling for the equivalent in today’s money of £28, brought the watercolour age to an end. This too had begun, in the mid-18th century, with technical innovations, such as the development of the cotton-rich Whatman paper favoured by artists and of ready-made watercolour paints, sold in the pocket-sized black tin paintboxes with which we remain familiar today.
In the pre-camera age, watercolour was the medium that amateurs and professional artists alike used to create a visual record of the world they encountered. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were typical of the leisured classes in being at once keen practitioners of the art and collectors of paintings that they kept as visual records of their travels.
Huge numbers of watercolours have survived, many of them in private collections, tucked away in folios, boxes, scrapbooks, and albums. They constitute such a comprehensive visual record of the world prior to 1900 that the charity called The Watercolour World is collecting them and making them available in a database anyone can access.
To archaeologists and historians, the value of these landscapes, buildings, and street scenes is obvious, but the huge and growing online collection supports any number of research themes. The charity’s website has galleries, for example, depicting the Staffordshire pottery towns, women workers of the maritime world, Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, the histories of windmills, Egyptology, fairground rides and cricket, and eye-witness accounts of the Bristol Riots of 1831 and the Crimean War of 1853-1856. Topographical watercolours also help scientists study climate change (thanks to Ruskin’s records of industrial pollution), and the rate and scale of change to eroding coastlines and melting alpine glaciers.
The charity depends on volunteers who help track down watercolours in public and private collections, and who work with the digitisation team to scan the images. They undertake research as well, identifying the locations depicted and entering the metadata that enables users to search and find the images they need.
And if you own a documentary watercolour made before 1900, the charity would be delighted to hear from you. Just go to the ‘Share your watercolours’ page on the website and upload an image with details of where, when, and by whom the painting was made, and they will be in touch.
Further information: http://www.watercolourworld.org
Text: Christopher Catling
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