1000 Watercolours of Genius , livre ebook

Victoria Charles




1000
Watercolours
of Genius
Authors:
Victoria Charles
Klaus H. Carl
Layout :
Baseline Co. Ltd
Hô Chi Minh City, Vietnam
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© 2016 Parkstone Press International, New York, USA
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© 2016 Albert Gleizes Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
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© 2016 André Derain Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA / ADAGP, Paris
© 2016 André Masson, Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA
© 2016 Andrew Wyeth
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© 2016 Charles Burchfield
© 2016 David Bomberg, Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA / VEGAP, Madrid
© 2016 David Jones, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA
© 2016, David Levine (Rights reserved)
© 2016, Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av. Cinco de Mayo no°2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F.
© 2016 Diego Rivera, Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA
© 2016, Don Nice (Rights reserved)
© The estate of Edward Burra
© 2016 Edward Hopper (Rights reserved)
© 2016 Edward Hopper, Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper, licensed by the Whitney Museum of American Art
© 2016, Emil Bisttram (Rights reserved)
© 2016 Nolde Stiftung-Seebüll
© 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av, Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F. / Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, México.
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© 2016, Yuri Annenkov
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© 2016, Guglielmo Ulrich (Rights reserved)
© 2016 Henri Matisse, Les Héritiers Matisse, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA / ADAGP, Paris
© 2016 The Henri Moore Foundation, Artists Right Society (ARS), New York, USA / ADAGP, Paris
© 2016, Ivan Rabuzin
© 2016 Jackson Pollock, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
© 2016 Estate of Pablo Picasso/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© 2016 Wyndham Lewis (Rights reserved)
© 2016 Estate of John Marin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
© 2016, Joseph Yoakum (Rights reserved)
© Kees van Dongen, VEGAP, Madrid
© 2016, Lucia Nogueira (Rights reserved)
© 2016 Lyonel Feininger Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
© 2016 Marc Chagall, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ ADAGP, Paris
© 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris/ Succession Marcel Duchamp
© 2016 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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© 2016 Othon Friesz, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
© 2016 Otto Dix Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York /
© 2016, Paul Nash (Rights reserved)
© 2016, Philip Pearlstein (Rights reserved)
© 2016 Raoul Dufy, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
© 2016 Red Grooms, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
© 2016 Roger Hilton (Rights reserved)
© 2016 Rudolf Schlichter (Rights reserved)
© Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Spain
© 2016 Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VEGAP, Madrid
© 2016 Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA
© Pracusa S.A.
Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Art © Jasper Johns//Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyrights on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case we would appreciate notification.
ISBN: 978-1-68325-449-2
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
14 TH - 15 TH CENTURIES
16 TH CENTURY
17 TH CENTURY
18 TH CENTURY
19 TH CENTURY
20 TH CENTURY
LIST OF ARTISTS
I NTRODUCTION
I s watercolour the oldest painting technique in world history? Be it in the caves of Lascaux or the ancient petroglyphs in Egypt and Greece, colour pigment mixed in water was always found. In the Middle Ages, the book painters used water-thinned colours to illustrate manuscripts. Each miniature on vellum paper in more or less opaque colours formed the origin of modern watercolour which we know today.
The Renaissance painters used watercolour for studies and modelli. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), for example, produced a considerable number of drawings on which he used various techniques and complementary mediums, including watercolour, which served to better bring out his drawn lines. Towards the end of the 15 th century, with Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) came the first widely recognised artist in appearance who fully committed himself to watercolour: He created around one hundred of them, which made him the first established watercolourist in art history. Later, it was the genre artists of landscape painting who appropriated the watercolour technique and recognised the advantages that the technique had in respect to the presentation of light effect.
Despite it all, it was a long road until watercolour paintings were considered a true, independent art form. In its history, it was always subject to the current tastes and the technical achievements of the the respective epoch. Partly discredited, partly thrust into obscurity, watercolour first received a definition, in the strict sense, at the end of the 18 th century. For a long time it appeared as a foundationless art form because, conceptually, it was ill-defined. Watercolour paintings were considered scattered, a pasttime, an amateurish art. In fact, the existence of watercolours was rarely mentioned in texts before the 19 th century, or the concepts were, to some degree, arbitrarily used: Even in 1757, none other than Denis Dierot (1713-1784) used the word ‘gouache‘ incorrectly.
Even when the technique itself, especially when compared to oil painting, was subjected to the opinion of ‘less worthy’, artists were still never tired of working with it and perfecting it. Dürer received more fame for his works in oil, and his etchings and wood cuttings, which were commissioned. Even so, he still busied himself equally with watercolour as much as he could in order to express himself more freely and spontaneously. In France, the watercolourists were permitted into the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in the last decade of the 18 th century under Louis XVI. Some years later in England, in 1804, the founding of the Society of Painters in Water Colours created recognition of watercolour as an official, independent art form.
The Seach for a Definition of Watercolours.
“In the old manuscripts, the texts were decorated with illustrations and figures, which were produced on vellum or the skin of stillborn calves. One viewed the first miniatures in such works [...]; the genre was perfected in Italy, Germany, and especially France, where it made rapid progress under Karl V.; still the invention of printing made sure, with its high paper output, that the miniatures were abandoned. The artists, who had prescribed to this exquisite genre, created delicate figures which one framed, later portraits, with which one decorated candy boxes, bracelets, and finally, trays. The colours were applied as gouache, that means thick and often mixed with white, which gave it a floury and plaster-like look. Watercolour was the result of perfecting gouache and the miniatures; it can be applied to numerous genres and is gradually expanding following the transition of art today. (Frederic August Antoine Goupil., Traité d’aquarelle et de lavis en six leçons [discourse on watercolour and washing in six lectures, 1858]
The word ‘watercolour‘ as we understand it today, was first used quite late in the language of art collection. The words watercolour in English and acquerello in Italian - which arose from aquarelle in French, Aquarell in German and acuarela in Spanish - went rather early into the necessary vocabulary. They literally mean watercolour or painting. Despite this relatively conceptual meaning, they were first recorded in the dictionary in the middle of the 19 th century. Therefore, the vocabulary exhibits, the text in relation to the watercolour painting, a certain arbitrariness. We consider them as the technique of painting with water, and so distemper, washing, and gouache could also be considered the beginning of watercolour. For this reason, it seems impossible to explain the history of watercolour without giving these older methods attention beforehand.
Distemper painting is a technique by which the colour is first mixed with water and subsequently, in order, thinned out with warm hide glue or arabic gum. The technique enjoyed great popularity before oil painting was invented. Opposite of watercolour, distemper was used on canvas or wood. The only point of view that connects it with watercolour is the fact that its application was attributed to waterpainting. Washing is a procedure