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Water-Color Painting
the most delicate of the graphic arts, is in an especial sense an English art. It was in England first that it attained to the dignity of a recognized artistic pursuit, and came to be-what it now is-admittedly the rival of oil painting in brilliancy and power. It has had a large share in the modern prosperity of the fine arts, and of late has been practiced by eminent artists in various countries, as France, Germany, Austria, and the United States. In the illumination of missals water colors were used mixed with the body white; and the same is true of the miniature painting of the 18th century. Frescoes and painting in tempera were also in a sense works in water color. But the art of water color, as we now understand the term, had its origin in quite a different way. Dürer and certain of the German, Flemish, and Dutch artists were accustomed to outline drawings with a reed pen, and fill in those outlines with an auxiliary flat wash. Gradually the hard lines were replaced by touches with the brush, and the result was a monochrome in browns and grays, bistre or India ink. These again came to be tinted, and so suggested the full use of colors. Rembrandt often drew in brown, and added dashes of strong color; and Rubens produced something very like modern water-color drawings.
The modern art became emancipated from the old traditions by "gradual disuse of the general shadow tint, and imitation of the local color, not alone of the objects themselves, but of every modification resulting from light, dark, halftint, or distance, a method which at once led to far greater truth and richness than could ever have been attained by merely passing color over the universal shadow tint." The stained drawing gradually gave way to the more perfect tinted drawing. But the tinted style WATER-COLOR PAINTING predominated till 1790; and it may be there were in the art. Turner showed what scope and power century were tinted monochromes. It was Artists who used the stained and Turner showed what scope and power there were in the art.
WATERFALL for the use of artists and others by mixing coloring substances in the state of fine powder with a soluble gum such