Selective attention

Another vast exhibition at Tate Britain, but one which will no doubt prove popular with the public. Watercolour is a national pastime, and the English tend to wax proprietorial about it. As a painting medium it appeals greatly to amateurs because it’s nearly always possible to do something passable in watercolour which couldn’t be achieved in oil paint without more knowledge, application and experience. Passable, yes, but not distinguished: it takes a very great deal of skill to achieve the more than ordinary in watercolour, and herein lies its seduction and challenge. The stakes are raised by the existence of a tradition of great watercolour painting in this country, which prospered with particular insistence in the period 1750 to 1850.

It is often said that the English are adept at watercolour because of the climate — the mild, wet and changeable weather that gives rise to so many wonderful skies and cloud effects. Water calls to water, so to speak. Now along comes this exhibition to ‘reassess the commonly held belief that the medium first flourished during a “golden age” of British watercolour’, to ‘challenge the notion that watercolour is singularly British’ and to ‘overturn such assumptions’ as watercolour being a medium for traditional representational painting, for depicting landscape, the sea and picturesque buildings.

In other words, another example of that curatorial insistence on moving the goalposts in order to invent an argument and something new to write about. Luckily, as with most art-world politics, much of this can be safely ignored, and the average exhibition-goer can enjoy a varied and at times provocative collection of pictures.

The show, which is partly thematically arranged and partly chronological, opens with some marvellous early examples of watercolour in the work of manuscript illuminators and miniature painters.