Top British watercolor paintings on show in SZ

 Helen Deng

    deng.hneng@gmail.com     

    WATERCOLOR paintings created by top British artists in the past two centuries are being exhibited at Shenzhen Museum, offering Shenzheners a rare chance to appreciate the art form.

    The paintings were brought here by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), one of the world’s greatest museums of art and design. They showcase the breadth and diversity of the National Collection of British Watercolors at V&A.

    It is the first exhibition that V&A has ever held in Shenzhen, as well as the first exhibition of watercolor paintings the museum has ever held in China.

    Martin Roth, director of V&A, said: “Shenzhen is a city of creativity and a city of design. So it’s natural for us to hold this exhibition in the city. We are looking forward to holding more and hopefully bigger exhibitions in Shenzhen.”

    “This year coincides with the 40th anniversary of the normalizing of Chinese-British diplomatic relations and we would like to express our own best wishes for this bilateral relationship through the exhibition,” said Ye Yang, curator of Shenzhen Museum.

    The 100 paintings are arranged in three themes — “Observation,” “Figures and Subjects,” “Landscape and Feeling” — to explore how British artists have used this versatile medium. A panoramic view of British watercolors is shown through the works of artists such as Thomas Girtin, Paul Sandby, John Robert Cozens, William Blake, J.M.W.Turner, and David Cox Senior.

    Watercolor paintings are created using paint made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble solution. Diluted paint is applied in washes creating a delicate effect. It is the transparency and flow of water which give watercolor painting its unique aesthetic.

    Watercolor painting has developed into an independent art form and occupies a unique position in Western art.

    In Britain especially, watercolor painting has had a distinct tradition since the late 18th century. Early watercolors on paper were mostly functional records, kept in albums or portfolios. But from the 1760s, artists were encouraged to paint watercolors for framing and display as distinctive artworks in their own right. As watercolors did not look good when exhibited alongside oil paintings, a group of watercolorists established a separate exhibition society in 1804. When the V&A opened in South Kensington, London in 1857, curators began to form a collection of British watercolor paintings, proudly claiming watercolor as a distinct national art form.