the Blue Night, Venice by Arthur Melville

Arthur Melville was a member of the Royal Watercolour Society and this painting from the Tate Collection dates from 1897. because of the Tate Gallery's strict copyright rules I'm afraid you'll have to use this link to see it http://tate.artgroup.com/mall/productpage.cfm/tate/PD-TATE0794-GE/70254 I’ve brought him to members attention because his method was very unusual. He first saturated the paper with washes of Chinese White and allowed the surplus to drain off. He then worked quite freely into the wet ground with pure watercolour. Although he was a 19th century figurative painter up close the way he applies paint appears quite abstract. Only at a reasonable viewing distance does the picture resolve itself. The detail bottom right shows the blurring of edges created by applying paint onto a wet ground and how unresolved his detail is. He’s not very well known but he was ahead of his time in some respects. Often working with his painting on the floor and applying the paint in broad fluid sweeps - I recently saw a video of Kurt Jackson doing the same thing. I’m tempted for my next body of work to apply the technique in acrylic on mountboard. Melville did in fact occasionally use cardboard as a support.