From upper to middle and lower class
English-born American painter Thomas Moran's 1871 watercolor sketches of Yellowstone so impressed Congress that they voted to make Yellowstone the nation's first national park. His work often featured the Rocky Mountains.
Image: Library of Congress.
American artist, naturalist, and ornithologist, John James Audubon is responsible for 'The Birds of America' (1827–1839), a color-plate book considered one of the finest ornithological works ever completed.
Considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America, Winslow Homer worked extensively in watercolor and is particularly renowned for his marine subjects.
While turning to oils later in his career, American Modernist artist Charles Demuth initially specialized in watercolors. While studying and painting in places as far afield as New York, Philadelphia, Provincetown, France, and Bermuda, Demuth invariably returned to his Lancaster, Pennsylvania, home to complete his works.
John Singer Sargent was one of the leading portrait painters of his generation, creating around 900 oils including the notorious 1884 study 'Portrait of Madame X.' His body of work also numbered more than 2,000 watercolors.
German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer is considered one of the greatest painters and engravers in history. Famed for his woodcut prints, Dürer is also considered one of the first prominent European painters to use watercolor in his work.
Swiss-born German artist Paul Klee was involved with the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter ("The Blue Rider"), founded by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc in 1911, with color an important part of the group's aesthetic. Klee experimented with various styles and media, and watercolor became an important means of understanding the connection between "drawing and the realm of color."
Between 1971 and 1985, Wyeth produced a series of more than 240 paintings and drawings of German model Helga Testorf. This extraordinary portfolio was to become known as the 'Helga Pictures.' Wyeth kept the works secret from his wife, Betsy, and Helga's husband, John Testorf.
Sources: (New World Encyclopedia) (DailyArt Magazine) (The New York Times)
See also: The most famous (and expensive) paintings in the world
By age 20, American painter Andrew Wyeth had mastered watercolor. He later became one of the best-known US artists of the middle 20th century, working also in drybrush (a watercolor style in which the water is squeezed from the brush), or egg tempera. His early watercolors were landscapes inspired by the countryside in and around Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, as well as Cushing, Maine.
American realist painter Edward Hopper primarily worked in oils to produce such iconic work as 1942's 'Nighthawks.' But Hopper was equally proficient as a watercolorist, too. His primary sources for both media were ordinary American life, seascapes, and rural landscapes.
One of the great Romantic painters of his age, English artist J.M.W. Turner is celebrated for his imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent, marine paintings executed in oils. Turner, however, began his career sketching and producing watercolors.
William Blake is considered a seminal figure in the history of poetry. But London-born Blake was also a visual artist of considerable merit, serving an apprenticeship with an engraver before trying watercolor painting.
Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian artist and is credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in Western art. Some of Kandinsky's most important works are watercolors.
Actually, O'Keeffe's vibrant and delicate early abstract watercolors chronicle her artistic journey, serving as examples of the way she developed a personal style that veered away from realism. Many of these watercolors are on display at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Long before she found fame with her celebrated oil paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes, Georgia O'Keeffe, the "Mother of American modernism," honed her craft in watercolor.
Inspired by the work of British artist J.M.W. Turner, Moran was drawn to the landscapes of the American wilderness of which 'Grand Canyon of the Colorado' is a typical example. It hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The volume consists of 435 hand-colored, life-size prints, made from engraved plates taken from watercolor studies, of which 'Roseate Spoonbill' is just one. Audubon is credited with helping to promote the artistic tradition of naturalistic renderings being completed with watercolor.
A self-taught artist, Homer was inspired by the landscapes and seascapes of his home state of Massachusetts, although he also traveled abroad. 'The Blue Boat' is currently exhibited in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
'Mountain with Red House' was painted while Demuth was in Europe, from December 1912 to spring 1914. It very likely depicts the French coastal village of Étretat.
Sargent's watercolors were often of landscapes that documented his travels. He toured Europe extensively, and also explored Morocco. 'Muddy Alligators'—a seemingly unlikely subject for a fashionable painter—is held in the Worcester Art Museum collection in Massachusetts.
Dürer's watercolors include many fine landscapes (notably depicting the Alps of the southern Tyrol) and those reflecting nature, such as 'Young Hare,' acknowledged as a masterpiece of observational art. It's held in the Albertina in Vienna, Austria.
'Klee's 'Before the Town,' a watercolor on paper mounted on cardboard, is on display at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hopper's 'Universalist Church' is a watercolor over graphite on cream wove paper and is in the Princeton University Art Museum collection.
Turner traveled widely throughout Europe, visiting countries such as France, Switzerland, and Austria. 'The Lake of Brienz' is a preparatory watercolor preserved in London's Tate Gallery.
As one of England's most accomplished landscape artists, it's no surprise that Constable's output in watercolor illustrated the British countryside with equal respect to color, perspective, and detail. 'Old Houses on Harnam Bridge, Salisbury with the Ancient Hospital of Saint Nicholas' is housed in the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
An English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition, John Constable is responsible for some of the world's most recognized paintings, including 'The Hay Wain' (1821). But his skill in oils also extended to a proficiency in watercolor.
Marsh chronicled the everyday life of the Big Apple and its environs. Some of his sketches and watercolors provided a preparatory template for murals like 'Sorting the Mail,' which can be admired in the Ariel Rios Federal Building in Washington, D.C.
The work of Reginald Marsh, an American artist who was born in Paris, France, is synonymous with New York City during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. He worked in several media including in egg tempera, oils, and in ink. Watercolor proved especially convenient when working quickly on location.
Among Blake's richest achievements in watercolor are the Dante watercolors, commissioned in 1826 to illustrate a volume of Dante's 'Divine Comedy.' 'The Circle of the Lustful,' also known as 'The Lovers' Whirlwind,' is held with a handful of surviving watercolors from this period at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in England.
Often reproduced as a fine art print, Kandinsky's 'Color Study. Squares with Concentric Circles' is representative of the artist's abstract work created in the medium.
Watercolor is often overlooked as a medium of merit when discussing art history. And yet some of the greatest and most respected artists the world has ever known at some point applied this method of painting during their careers. And there are those whose names are in fact synonymous with this technique, in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution. So, who are the watercolor artists who continue to influence painting today?
Click through for a portfolio of artists credited with establishing watercolor as an independent, mature, and respected painting medium.
History's greatest watercolor artists
July is World Watercolor Month
LIFESTYLE Art
Watercolor is often overlooked as a medium of merit when discussing art history. And yet some of the greatest and most respected artists the world has ever known at some point applied this method of painting during their careers. And there are those whose names are in fact synonymous with this technique, in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution. So, who are the watercolor artists who continue to influence painting today?
Click through for a portfolio of artists credited with establishing watercolor as an independent, mature, and respected painting medium.