ABSTRACT
In the case of watercolourists, this is easiest to trace in relation to the activities of the Society of Painters in Water Colours whose frankly mercantile approach to exhibitions constituted a distinctive alternative to the Royal Academy. While any profession is concerned with establishing status and emphasising the disinterested nature of its project, it is always fundamentally concerned with the creation and control of a market and with maximising the individual's economic position within it. The emergence of the 'painting in water colours' as a stylistic/technical category is one of the central concerns of histories of watercolours. The essential features of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, the gathering together of a self-elected and restricted group of specialist practitioners. However much the Society embraced commerce and benefited from the growth in middle-class patronage, therefore, the professional concern to raise social status meant that it stopped well short of embracing the more radical conclusions of a market-led ideology.
