ABSTRACT
John Lewis Roget's History of the 'Old Water-Colour Society' (published 1891) is not just noteworthy for the thorough way the author knits together the archival m aterial gathered by the Society's Secretary, Joseph John Jenkins; as the subtitle proclaims, it is'Preceded by an Account of English Water Colour Art and Artists in the 18th Century', which emphasises the 'progress . . . of a truly national a rt'.1 Roget's views were w idely accepted at the time. In the same year, the Royal Academy itself showed a'Collection of Water Colour Drawings Illustrating the Progress of the Art of Water-Colour in England' and there was a general con sensus that the m edium was uniquely suited to the depiction of the nation's scenery and climate. Such argum ents can be traced back to the beginning of the century when the first w riters on the m edium proclaimed the trium ph of the English school of watercolourists at a time of war w ith France. W hat was then m eant by 'progress' was more narrowly focused: it concentrated on asserting the claims of a professional elite to have developed watercolour practice from the addition of a few washes of colour to a drawing, known as the 'tin ted 'o r 's ta ined drawing', into a prestigious public art which m ight stand com parison w ith oil paintings, the 'pain ting in water colours'. A hundred years after Roget's text, the progressive approach still dominates w riting on the medium. Many w riters continue to concentrate on establishing a canon of artists responsible for styl istic innovations and the emphasis remains on outlining a national trium ph cen tred on the production of landscapes. The term s of the progress have changed, however. Responding to British artists' less than glorious role in the develop m ent of m odern art from its origins in Impressionism, num erous w riters have claimed that watercolourists such as Francis Towne and John Sell Cotman were m odern artists before their time. The result has been a recasting of the canon of progressive watercolourists, but in a way which leaves the metaphysical notion of progress intact.
