Tag Archives: British Watercolours

‘Pre-Raphaelite truth to nature’ – a watercolour by John Frederick Lewis

Surrounded by tell-tale feathers, this little cat raises a paw, ready to strike again. Its prey is actually a peacock-feather fan, which a young woman is dangling teasingly above its head. Both the cat and its owner feature in an… Read more

Better than JMW Turner? Thomas Girtin’s ‘Morpeth Bridge’ watercolour

Was Girtin a better watercolourist than JMW Turner? Turner himself seemed to say so – after his friend’s early death, Turner remarked, If Tom Girtin had lived, I should have starved. He was exaggerating wildly, of course, but Turner’s words… Read more

JMW Turner’s ‘Dunstanburgh Castle’: poetry, imagination and reality

Not so long ago, I went out to Dunstanburgh, near Alnwick, to see how much of the landscape I could recognise in our watercolour by JMW Turner. Turner was only 22 when he visited in 1797, as part of a… Read more