Moist

This touring exhibition was sponsored by Australian Air Express.

• Araluen Galleries, Alice Springs Cultural Precinct, Alice Springs, NT | 24 March – 7 May 2006
• Perc Tucker Regional Art Gallery, Townsville, QLD | 26 May – 9 July 2006
• Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington, VIC | 25 July – 24 September 2006
• Riddoch Gallery, Mount Gambier, SA | 1 December 2006 – 18 February 2007

Moist is a rare glimpse into the National Gallery of Australia’s collection of Australian watercolours. It highlights the extraordinary breadth and depth of the collection, and is the first collection-based show to present the Gallery’s rich holdings of works in this popular medium. Moist is not a history of watercolour painting in Australia. Instead it focuses on the liquid nature of watercolour and how artists have experimented with the medium to create diverse representations of physical, emotional or atmospheric conditions. The selection of works ranges from the highly figurative to images of a purely abstract and emotional intensity that are experimental in approach to form and process. In this exhibition watercolour becomes a metaphor for the moistness of a breeze, the shimmer of sweat on an adolescent male brow, the erotic intensity of an unexpected liaison or the subtle dissolution of pigment and the blending of hues in water.

While watercolour, gouache and coloured inks are all water-based media the selection of works presented has been limited to those that principally employ watercolour, taking advantage of its intrinsic transparency and luminosity as a medium. Watercolour is rapid-drying and consists of finely ground pigments suspended in an aqueous binder – usually gum, glucose, glycerine and wetting agents – applied to paper. Gouache on the other hand is opaque, rendered so by the addition of white pigment. Watercolour may be applied in thin layers that allow the paper to show through in light tonal areas or in successive washes that create rich layers of colour in the manner of oil glazes. It may be applied wet-on-wet for a luscious atmospheric effect or wet-on-dry for more meticulous detail.

Moist is informed by ancient Greek philosophies of the four elements (with water as the primary focus here) from which all matter is derived and from which the spiritual essence of life evolves. There is a physiological association too in the related principle of the four cardinal humours, and the duality of the ‘qualities’ of wet and dry. Every medium imposes its own principles and for watercolour it is immediacy. In mastering the medium the artist must deal with the chance confrontation of the brush touching the paper. There must be an acceptance too, of what unfolds. In his 1939 Norman Lindsay water colour book, Lindsay cautioned: ‘We find out methods by experiment and failure, and no one can lay down precise principles for a medium so fluid and accidental as watercolour. To this day I never sit down to a watercolour without enduring the suspense of an experiment designed to go wrong.’¹

Barbara Campbell renders in watercolour the words that prompt her web-based performance 1001 nights cast documented at http://1001.net.au because ‘it suggests a temporal quality appropriate for the project’. She believes that ‘while there is an aspect you can’t control in watercolour, you need to reach a middle point where you control it as much as it controls you … ’She adds, ‘when I put the brush down the brush is a petal or a leaf … it’s quite Zen in that aspect.’²

In a similar context watercolour painting might also be likened to elements of Taoist philosophy, where one must be attuned to and accepting of the flows of chance and change in life. In Taoism, water represents this basic tenet because of its strength and mutability. Water always finds the easiest path, yet there is little else stronger.John Olsen, who holds closely the ideals of Taoism chose watercolour for his 1975 Lake Eyre series, painted after the lake had flooded for only the second time since colonisation: ‘The flooding of Lake Eyre provided the Taoist example for me. The lake is not there but is there.’³ In The Goyder channel approaching the void we observe from above, like voyeurs, as the massive Goyder Channel penetrates Lake Eyre. It is at this exact moment that a new fecund world explodes with all forms of flying, floating and crawling life.

David Hockney speaks of how: ‘With watercolour, you can’t cover up the marks. There’s the story of the construction of the picture, and then the picture might tell another story as well.’ David Jolly’s Interior Schweppes 1 (2000) reflects these words. The beauty of Jolly’s delicate watercolours is in direct contrast to his subject matter – the ‘jungle of steel’ of the Schweppes factory. In their composition, colour and definition the watercolours mirror the idiosyncrasies of the photographic process from which they evolved. The sometimes blurry imagery is a further consequence of the sultry environment of the factory, where large amounts of water are used in the production process. In faithful detail Jolly focuses on the detail of machinery, the ‘visual sexuality of the glue machine’ and the patterns of the towel used to wipe down the glue from the machine. In the borders of these carefully composed works is evidence of Jolly’s painting process; it provides an intriguing embellishment to his subject.

Artists working abstractly have often sought to manipulate the liquid nature of watercolour in their work. Artists such as Yvonne Audette, Gunter Christmann and Ian Friend, whose contemplative abstract compositions are included in Moist, evoke sublime and lingering memories. Friend’s Biting the air #8 2004, influenced by the poetry of English poet JH Prynne, is ‘concerned with gravity, balance and a sense of simultaneous interiority/exteriority’.⁴ Friend’s belief that Prynne’s work extended ‘the poetic’ to demonstrate how different types of language intersect, overlap and enmesh is recreated in the sensuous surface texture of his Biting the air series. In stark contrast to the organic background there are several white ovals, intersecting at the joins or edges of each sheet of the triptych. These pure elliptical forms signify points of clarity and suggest that this moment will continue outside the boundary of our visual experience.

The watercolour medium imparts a translucency ideal for the painting of atmospheric morning mists and glimmering moonrises in the real and imaginary landscapes of Conrad Martens, Hans Heysen, JW Tristram and Rosslynd Piggott. So, too, the dreamy watercolours of Charles Conder, Harold Herbert and James WR Linton make palpable their languid reflections of soft breezes on dappled waters. Piggott chose to work in watercolour  when the problems of stretching canvas became overwhelming. Typhoon (1997), painted while she was artist-in-residence in Kitamoto, Japan, is one of four watercolours that explore the nuances of substance and space.

The extraordinary still life watercolours of Neville Cayley and eX de Medici share an artist’s fascination for both the meticulous process of watercolour painting and the minutiae of life. Cayley’s large and superbly rendered Australian gamebirds (1888) was painted six years after his arrival in Australia and might be a promotional piece, intended to demonstrate to an Australian audience his appreciation of native bird life, as well as his competence as a watercolourist. The exquisite detail of the rendering belies the fact that this carefully arranged pile of birds was slaughtered for the sake of art. So too the wildlife documented in the colonial watercolours of the Sydney Bird Painter and Mickey of Ulladulla is touched with the poignancy of an idyllic, now vanished, past. Exotic specimens like Cayley’s gamebirds, they are resplendent against an empty backdrop.

eX de Medici consciously crams Blue (Bower/Bauer) (1998–2000) with her ‘big miniatures … to banish paper’s whiteness with a vainglorious flourish of interces’.⁵ This vision of excess was painted as if the artist was under the spell of natural history artist Ferdinand Bauer.⁶ Like a Bower bird eX de Medici collects blue ribbons, shards of a broken plate and all things blue to adorn her work; then channelling the ghastly lives of her convict forebears, she adds shackles and bullets. She combines ‘the methodical brushwork of natural history illustration with the loaded symbolism of vanitas still life painting [and] … exploits the cultural nuances of each approach – the development of natural history classification and drawing as an agent of colonisation and empire, and the association of still life with the vain acquisition of material goods’.⁷

The intimate portraits of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, Blamire Young, and Steve Cox are incredibly different in style, yet share a sensitivity to the physical and emotional condition of the sitter as well as to the process of watercolour painting. While Wainewright chose watercolour to create his tender and beautifully rendered portraits because it was the popular medium of the day for portraiture, contemporary artists like Steve Cox now experiment with watercolour for the intrinsic qualities of the medium. Cox’s large-format portrait Curtis dancing on E (2003) is painted from a photograph taken by Cox and later transferred onto paper in his studio with seemingly effortless fluency. It captures in liquid hues the succulent flesh tones of his subject and the sultry atmosphere of Curtis in a trance, luridly charged with eroticism and the sheer pleasure of the moment.

Portability is also a drawcard for watercolour painting. Paper, paintbrushes, a small tin of watercolour dry cakes or tubes and access to water is all that is required. Like many artists, Mary Cockburn Mercer’s watercolour paint box was her constant companion. The Gallery owns a small group of her watercolours which provide a glimpse of a peripatetic lifestyle in Europe and the Pacific during the 1920s and 1930s. Mercer’s Tahitian lily (1938) forms part of a visual diary. Mercer paints a seemingly fragile lily, its delicate white petals and overt stamens protruding from a sturdy stem. The lush tropical flower shimmers in the light from the open window and is drawn to the world outside, where the ocean stretches endlessly to the horizon.

Norman Lindsay, a remarkably gifted watercolourist, is perhaps best known for his luscious watercolours dominated by voluptuous and often fearsome women. Lindsay’s virtuosity with the watercolour technique is demonstrated by Unknown seas (1922), which he believed to be one of his best. Based on the story of Odysseus and the sirens, it is typical of Lindsay’s style and allegorical approach. Lindsay’s work sits with a diverse group of watercolours by Rah Fizelle, Russell Drysdale and John R Walker that celebrate the sensuality of the female form. Elsewhere couples deal with love, lust and indifference in the works of Gladys Gibbons, Albert Tucker and Laurence Hope. John Brack’s dancers whirl and spin in the humid heat of a dance room floor, while Dorrit Black and Francis Lymburner portray the more quiet and meditative moments.

Moist brings together ninety watercolours from the colonial period to the present and demonstrates the extraordinary richness of the Gallery’s collection. Some are well-known treasures from the collection. Others will be exhibited for the first time. Each has its own story, yet they are all linked by the intrinsic qualities and associations of this versatile medium, demonstrating that watercolour has never lost its challenge for Australian artists.

Anne McDonald
Curator Australian Prints and Drawings

A closer look at watercolour technique

The works on paper in Moist: Australian watercolours cover a wide range of periods and genres, but the one aspect they have in common is the medium of watercolour. In the purest sense watercolour is a painting medium which uses pigments dispersed in water and bound in gum, applied by brush to a paper support. This basic principle has remained unchanged over 500 years. The gum is customarily gum arabic mixed as a proprietary formula with other ingredients to enhance its working characteristics. The pigments would once have been extracted from minerals and plants, ground by hand and stored in shells. More familiar colours pre-prepared in pans or tubes, kept moist and easy to work with the addition of humectants and wetting agents such as honey and ox gall, were developed in the nineteenth century. Modern pigments are likely to have a synthetic origin and are usually machine-ground to ensure a homogenous composition.

The conventional support for watercolour is paper, held flat and taut; preferably with a textured surface and the right degree of absorption to allow for a controlled application of the thin, fluid wash. A rough finished paper is often preferred as the tiny hollows in the surface impart vitality and variety to the wash. The choice of paper colour is almost always white or cream as the lightness of the paper is reflected through the sheer layer of applied colour, providing the desired brilliance in the pigments

Watercolour reached its peak of technical excellence as an artform in England between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, becoming both a collectable and exhibitable commodity. Initially it was regarded as a medium for amateurs. Many artists supplemented their income by teaching and writing manuals for watercolour painting. The current abundance of modern manuals attests to the technique’s enduring popularity and accessibility. Historically, the purpose of the work played an important role in the choice of materials and technique. In the nineteenth century, the creation of a highly finished watercolour intended for public display or sale would have been approached in a quite different manner to that of a work produced for private consumption.

Watercolour was originally used simply as a means of tinting prints and drawings, since its transparency allows the underlying structure of the ink or pencil lines to remain visible. A large expressive range is possible as the colour itself can be layered or blended in a number of ways. In Rah Fizelle’s figure studies the pigment washes have been impressively handled, using a wet-on-wet technique over the soft pencil outlines. The granular nature of the pigments is apparent, particularly in the bands of red and brown ochres, which have been applied adjacent to one another, allowed to combine and yet remain distinct.

Watercolour washes are dispersions of solid particles in water, not dyed water; the smaller the particles, the longer they will remain in suspension. Organic pigments, such as indigo and madder, are made up of extremely small particles, so the resulting paints are easier to handle compared with those which have a more granular texture like ochres. Blues have notoriously varied handling properties. Prussian blue and indigo wash easily and evenly, whereas other blues such as cobalt and ultramarine deposit grainy sediments.

Many artists avoid pre-mixing watercolour pigments on a palette as this can deaden the colour. Instead, the purity of the pigment can be maintained by building up layers of transparent washes. The technique can appear deceptively simple, but it requires virtuoso handling. By this means it is possible to capture those sought-after fleeting impressions of atmosphere and light. The layered wash in Streeton’s Egyptian vendor of drinks (1897) is notable for its transparency, which even in the shadow areas creates an extraordinary depth and luminosity. There are barely any indications of drawing. Expanses of white paper, unmodulated except for a few touches of wash, define the pillars of the white arch from which the figure is emerging into the harsh brilliance of an exotic sunlight.

Whites are one of the greatest causes of controversy. Purists argue that highlights should only be created through the reserved white of the paper or the smallest touches of body colour. Gouache is a medium in which the transparent watercolour pigments are provided with opacity by the admixture of white. The addition of chalk, fillers and extenders reduces the amount of pigment used, making gouache a more economical option.

In Streeton’s work the only added white highlights are those indicating the birds in the background. Highlights could also be achieved by a plethora of reductive techniques including scratching, sponging and even sandpapering so that selected areas of wash would be removed revealing the white paper beneath. The English papermakers Whatman became famous for their papers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; not only because of their wove structure and range of textured finishes, but because of their unique hard, gelatine-sized surfaces which could withstand the rigours of reductive watercolour techniques without disintegrating into pulp.

Although extraordinary vibrancy can be achieved with watercolour, light exposure may diminish pigment intensity and darken paper supports, destroying the tonal contrast. When a work has faded the margin areas of paper under the window mount provide a vital record of the original appearance. Such a change is apparent in William Westall’s small seascape Cape Wilberforce, where a traditional wash technique has been employed. Indian red, a light stable pigment, has been applied in the sky area. This is now apparent as pink clouds; while a yellowish-brown ochre is visible in the sea. Originally, a wash of indigo would have been laid over both, with the underlying warm and cool tones, providing the differentiation between sky and sea. The indigo wash has faded completely. Only small patches of a bright, light stable blue remain in the sky. Pigments such as indigo are exceptionally fugitive (light sensitive) but have continued to be favoured by artists.

With the exception of miniature portraits, watercolours were originally kept in albums, which assisted in their care and preservation. When the Royal Academy was established in 1780 a small room was included for the display of watercolours, acknowledging the medium’s ascendance, although not its equality with oils.

Mounting and framing created new problems. Constant exposure to light and polluted air damaged pigments and degraded paper; poor quality, acidic mounting materials compounded the problems. Artists resorted to varnishing and glazing works in an attempt to keep them safe. In the nineteenth century many new and exotic pigments became available. Unfortunately many were unstable, particularly the aniline dyestuffs. The permanence of watercolours was the subject of much controversy and debate.

Public concern led eventually in 1835 to the publication of George Field’s Chromatography, the first truly scientific investigation into artists’ pigments, and later in 1888 to a government enquiry. The Russell and Abney Report on The Action of Light on Watercolours had far-reaching effects and established the principles on which modern gallery conservation and display standards are based.

Andrea Wise
Senior Paper Conservator