Follow LUX on Instagram: the. Now, though, these paintings are emerging, blinking, into the light. The Watercolour World is a rapidly growing website that hosts digital reproductions of watercolours from around the world.
Watercolour is often passed over as an unimportant medium, despite the fact that Ruskin , Gainsborough , Turner and Constable all used it at various times. At Woolwich Military Academy and elsewhere, officers studied drawing and were taught how to survey a landscape and draw coasts and harbours so that the knowledge of newly gained territories could be spread amongst the military. The watercolourist Paul Sandby was among those who did the training, and the courses were clearly popular, with many accomplished amateur painters emerging from the military academies.
As a result, military, government and private collections are awash with watercolour landscapes from across the world, all painted with an attention to detail. Many of them, however, have not seen the light of day for decades, if not centuries.
Read more: 6 mountain restaurants to stir your soul this summer. Launched with the patronage of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, and realised through support from the Marandi Foundation , The Watercolour World aims to collate hundreds of thousands of watercolour paintings, many of which have never been available to the public until now.
Just as exciting is the scientific potential of the project. Many watercolours offer a view of a world that no longer exists and are a means by which conservationists, ocean scientists, coastal engineers and geologists can reach back into the past, make sense of the present, and perhaps safeguard the future.
