Watercolour is a painting medium of pigment suspended in a water-based binder, valued for its luminous transparency and the visibility of the white paper beneath.
Watercolour is a painting medium in which pigment is suspended in a water-soluble binder, traditionally gum arabic, and applied to paper that contributes its own white luminosity through the transparent washes. The medium has been used for thousands of years — Egyptian papyri, Chinese landscape paintings on silk, and medieval European illuminated manuscripts all employed water-based pigments. As an autonomous fine-art medium, watercolour rose to particular prominence in 18th- and 19th-century England. Paul Sandby in the 18th century, Thomas Girtin and J. M. W. Turner in the early 19th, and a remarkable cohort including John Sell Cotman, John Constable, and David Cox brought watercolour to its golden age. Turner's late watercolours, painted on touring expeditions through Switzerland and Italy, dissolved landscape into atmospheric washes that anticipated Impressionism by decades. In America, Winslow Homer revolutionised the medium with bold, direct watercolours of Caribbean and Maine subjects. The 20th century brought John Singer Sargent's brilliant travel watercolours and Andrew Wyeth's dry-brush technique. Watercolour rewards speed, decision, and the courage to leave the white paper alone.