Perhaps due to its essential liquidity, the medium of watercolor is sometimes perceived of as being a tad inferior to the more viscous permanence of oil paint. Dabbling in watercolors was once considered to be a rather feminine artistic pursuit, or perhaps simply a means to depict delicate floral compositions or hazy pastoral scenes.
Watercolors were also used for preliminary impressions or quick travel studies, but when "real" painting needed to be done, oils were the generally preferred standard. In a reversal of this notion, American portrait master John Singer Sargent found watercolor travel studies to offer a liberating change of pace from his more serious oil-dominated work. Sargent eventually abandoned portraiture altogether and turned to watercolors eagerly, producing many stunning results.
Arthur Melville
Like the great J.M. W. Turner, Scottish artist Arthur Melville shrugged off the marginalization of watercolors and used them to explore new techniques. Melville was equally adept at both watercolors and oils, but his use of the former was often fascinating. Melville studied in Edinburgh and Paris and later became part of the late 19th century Orientalist school, touring Egypt, Persia (now Iran), Constantinople and India.
Melville's watercolors from his time abroad are fascinating, as were his actual expeditions heightened by romance, intrigue, camels, pashas and other exotic visions. Using a distinct, semi-impressionistic style, Melville managed to convey a sense of lucent motion in his Orientalist-inspired artworks and Mediterranean scenes. For his overall excellence with the medium, Melville was named a member of the Royal Scottish Water Colour Society; sadly, however, Melville became ill while in Spain and died from complications of typhoid in 1904.
John Marin
Born in New Jersey in 1870, John Marin headed for Europe after his initial art studies and soaked up the continental climate of modernism. He eventually made his way to Paris, where he was scouted by photographer Edward Steichen as being an emerging new talent. Marin was making ends meet by producing Parisian etchings, but after Steichen got a glimpse of Marin's other work he contacted fellow photographer and 291 Gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. Marin soon became a longstanding member of Stieglitz's privileged circle of American artists, and he was also a friend of Stieglitz and Stieglitz's wife, painter Georgia O'Keeffe.
Throughout his 83 years, Marin developed a reputation of being the foremost American watercolorist of his day. He was certainly prolific, and he was also often quoted as likening painting to golf, with the fewer strokes taken, the better the results. Marin's abstract and fluidly intuitive approach distinguished his watercolors, particularly his vivid seascapes of Maine. A slight, quirky man who sometimes called himself the "Ancient Marin-er," Marin died in 1953, leaving behind many watercolor and oil works which are now part of numerous museum collections.
Charles Burchfield
Ohio native Charles Burchfield developed an early affinity for watercolors, with a particularly intense creative surge between 1915-1917, when Burchfield was in his twenties. The organic works from these years would strongly influence the remainder of Burchfield's career, bringing him back full circle from American Scene-type efforts in the 1940s to reinterpretations of his youthful visions of nature.
Burchfield noted how his technique often involved a dry brush and dry paper and a minimal use of water, therefore allowing him more of a chance to reinterpret things if necessary. With water itself being such an integral yet occasionally unpredictable element in watercolor painting, Burchfield preferred to remain in control.
"I like to be able to advance and retreat just like a man writing a book," he elaborated further. "I think I know what I want to do but, when I put it down it's not right, and it's got to be changed. I have to find out where the idea wants to go." And in Charles Burchfield's case, those ideas often went to some very curious corners, full of midsummer katydids, rain-soaked skies, huge trippy sunflowers or pale silver-white moons.
Sources
- American Salons -- Robert M. Crunden (Oxford University Press, 1993)
- Smithsonian Archives of American Art -- Oral History Interview with Charles Burchfield, 1959
- Arthur Melville -- The Independent UK.com
