Masters of Water-Colour Painting — Themes and Context

Biography as Technical Catalogue

Cundall structures his introduction as a sequence of artist entries, each roughly two paragraphs long, moving chronologically from Paul Sandby (born 1731) to James Baker Pyne (born 1800). The emphasis falls consistently on working methods and materials. For William Henry Hunt, Cundall describes a process of rough pencil outlines, thick coatings of Chinese white left to harden, and subsequent colour application 'with a sure hand,' followed by knife scraping to create texture. This level of technical detail recurs: Samuel Prout's use of a reed pen for sparse architectural indications, David Cox's publication of a 'Treatise on Landscape Painting and Effect in Water Colours,' and James Duffield Harding's lithographic reproductions. The biographical format thus functions less as life-writing and more as a catalogue of techniques, aligning with the volume's evident purpose as a reference for practitioners.

The Plate List as a Curatorial Statement

The list of twenty-four colour plates, printed before the introduction, reveals a deliberate curatorial choice. Artists are represented by single works, with titles as varied as 'Near Jumièges' (Bonington), 'Classical Scene' (Cotman), and 'Plucking the Fowl' (Hunt). The selection favours landscape and architectural subjects—eighteen of the twenty-four plates depict outdoor scenes—with only a few figure studies or still lifes. Notably absent are portraits or historical narratives. The editor, C. Geoffrey Holme, acknowledges lenders including Mr. A. E. Hutton and Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons, indicating that the plates were drawn from private collections and commercial galleries rather than public museums. This provenance shapes the volume's character: it is not a comprehensive survey but a showcase of accessible, saleable works.

Gaps Between Subject and Evidence

The catalog subject 'Watercolor painting, British' implies a coherent national tradition, yet the excerpts offer little synthesis. Cundall does not compare artists across periods or argue for a British school; instead, each entry stands alone. The introduction's opening historical paragraph, which traces water-based painting from Egypt to Europe, never connects that lineage to British practice. Furthermore, the text includes no discussion of watercolour as a medium distinct from oil or tempera in aesthetic terms—only in procedural ones. The reader is left to infer what 'British' might mean from the artists' birthplaces (Devon, Birmingham, Bristol) and their travels (Normandy, Italy, Venice). The volume's structure, with its plate list preceding the text, suggests that the images, not the introduction, carry the burden of defining the subject.

Readers approaching this volume should treat Cundall's introduction as a set of glosses on the plates rather than a unified history. The technical observations—Hunt's knife work, Prout's reed pen, Cox's treatise—offer concrete entry points for studying individual works. The plate list, with its lenders and varied subjects, rewards attention as a document of early twentieth-century taste. For those interested in the relationship between text and image in art publishing, the gaps between the catalog subject and the actual content are as instructive as the content itself.

Looking through Cundall’s quiet attention to individual technique, I recalled my grandfather’s old tins of half-dried paints—each colour a small argument about light. Then I remembered turning pages of The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 6 (of 6) From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century (6 volumes) — Inside the Classic, where art felt less like fame and more like patient, human hands at work.