John Singer Sargents approach to watercolour was unconventional. Disregarding late-nineteenth-century aesthetic standards that called for carefully delineated and composed landscapes filled with transparent washes, his confidently bold, dense strokes and loosely defined forms startled critics and fellow practitioners alike. One reviewer in England, where Sargent spent much of his adult life, called his work swagger watercolours. For Sargent, however, the watercolours were not so much about swagger as about a new way of thinking. In watercolour as opposed to oils his vision became more personal and his works more interconnected. Presenting nearly 100 works of art, this book is the first major publication of Sargents watercolours in twenty years. Each chapter highlights a different subject or theme that attracted the artists attention during his travels through Europe and the Middle East: sunlight on stone, figures reclining on grass, patterns of light and shadow. Insightful essays by the worlds leading experts enhance this book and introduce readers to the full sweep of Sargents accomplishments in the medium, in works that delight the eye as well as challenge our understanding of this prodigiously gifted artist.

"The Metropolitan Museum began acquiring American drawings and watercolors in 1880, just ten years after its founding. Since then it has amassed more than 1,500 works executed by American artists during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in watercolor, pastel, chalk, ink, graphite, gouache, and charcoal. This volume documents the draftsmanship of more than 150 known artists before 1835 and that of about 60 unidentified artists of the period. It includes drawings and watercolors by such American masters as John Singleton Copley, John Trumbull, John Vanderlyn, Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, George Inness, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Because the 504 works illustrate such a wide range of media, techniques, and styles, this publication is a veritable history of American drawing from the eighteenth through most of the nineteenth century."--Metropolitan Museum of Art website.

Introduces the history and types of watercolor paintings, and presents many works by American watercolor artists.

A national treasure is celebrated in this landmark publication. The Birds of America is a monumental classic, but it has never been explored like this before. This important new volume presents all the dazzling watercolors that Audubon painted for these monumental engravings. We are familiar with the prints engraved by Robert Havell Jr., but Audubon’s Aviary illuminates the original masterpieces that were created by Audubon himself and tells the story behind their creation with fresh insights and engaging quotes from his writings. These powerful paintings—all newly photographed using state-of-the-art techniques—possess a startling immediacy, vibrancy, and fluidity that link natural history, art, and a respect for the environment. These watercolors transmit Audubon’s devotion to his craft with their inscriptions and layers of media wrought with a miniaturist’s attention to detail and their revolutionary compositions, which for the first time in history depicted all the birds life-size. Audubon is considered America’s first great watercolorist, introducing innovative approaches developed over a lifetime of study. Even judged alongside today’s technology, his dramatic tableaux remain some of the most spectacular natural history documents and visually arresting works of art ever produced.

Cézanne's watercolors exhibit not only kaleidoscopic arrays of translucent color but also very light graphite pencil lines that contrast strikingly with the soft watery touches of color. These drawn lines have been largely overlooked in previous studies of Cézanne's watercolors. In this ravishing book, Matthew Simms argues that it was the dialogue between drawing and painting--the movement between the pencil and the paintbrush--that attracted Cézanne to watercolor. Watercolor allowed Cézanne to express what he termed his "sensations" in two distinct modes that become a record of his shifting and spontaneous responses to his subject. Combining close visual analysis and examination of historical context, Simms focuses on the counterpoint of drawing and color in Cézanne's watercolors over the course of his career and as viewed in relation to his oil paintings. More than a tool for sketching or preparing for oil paintings, Simms contends, watercolor was a unique means of expression in its own right that allowed Cézanne to combine in one place the two otherwise opposed mediums of drawing and painting.

Gathers watercolors by Chagall, Picasso, Matisse, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, George Grosz, Otto Dix, Paul Islee, Joan Miro, and Piet Mondrian.

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) is one of the core figures of 19th-century American art. While most well-known for his oil paintings of Civil War scenes and the windswept Atlantic coastline, Homer's oeuvre encompasses a variety of themes, ranging from childhood games through the life-and-death struggles of man and nature. The Clark Art Institute holds one of the greatest collections of Homer's work across all media, including wood engravings, etchings, watercolors, drawings, and paintings from nearly all phases of his career. The collection was assembled predominately by Robert Sterling Clark (1877-1956), who purchased his first Winslow Homer painting in 1915, followed by Two Guides in 1916 and maintained a passion for the artist throughout the rest of his collecting career, acquiring the small oil Playing a Fish in 1955. This book examines Robert Sterling Clark as a collector of Homer and the Clark's extensive holdings of the artist. Over thirty entries discuss the role of individual works in Homer's oeuvre and their larger significance to the art world. An illustrated checklist provides information on titles, dates, and media for the entire collection. Distributed for the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Exhibition Schedule: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (06/09/13-09/08/13)

The German-American artist, photographer, illustrator and teacher Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) was one of the modernist era's true world citizens, allied with the Berlin Secession, Die Brücke, the Blaue Reiter and the Bauhaus. The Busch-Reisinger Museum, home to the Lyonel Feininger Archive, recently received a bequest of more than 400 Feininger drawings and watercolors from the estate of curator and collector William S. Lieberman, most of which have never before been published. Lieberman appears to have made a point of acquiring Feininger's more intimate and personal works (as opposed to, say, the murals for which he is so well known), and such works constitute the bulk of this volume. Essayist Peter Nisbet provides entries on individual works, offers perspective on Feininger's reception in the United States in the decades after his return from Germany in 1937 and suggests directions for an overdue reassessment of his oeuvre.