A figure painting made using Tempera painting techniques

CHONGQING (CQNEWS) -- Recently, in the 2018 Yubei Week activities of Chongqing and the World Carnival, “Trace To The Source - The British Watercolor Fine Art Exhibition In The Nineteenth Century” opened at the Liangjiang Art Museum in Chongqing. More than fifty famous British watercolor paintings from the nineteenth Century are displayed in the art gallery, attracting many visitors.

“This painting is the only painting on display that is not watercolor.” Lei Yongbin, an associate professor of the Department of Arts Education of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, said that the figure painting is from James Charles Playfair, using Tempera painting techniques using egg yolks to make watercolor pigments. It is because of the egg yolk added to the pigment that this painting, which was painted more than 100 years ago, still looks bright today.

A painting by John Clayton Clark

The painting, made up of four figures in different poses, was made by John Clayton Clark. “He was a painter famous for his illustrations in Dickens's novels. In 1910, the British Museum collected his nearly six hundred illustrations for Dickens’s novels.” When it comes to John Clayton Clark, Lei Yongbin explained his paintings.

Most of the works on display in this watercolor fine art exhibition are authentic works by famous British artists in the nineteenth Century. The works cover landscape paintings of various styles, portraits, human bodies, as well as original illustrations of Dickens’s characters since the Victorian period.

Watercolor painting originated from Europe and then was introduced into Britain. The modern watercolor painting system was established in Britain from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. It can be said that British watercolor paintings dominated the entire watercolor painting history. And the nineteenth Century was the most prosperous period of British watercolor painting. (Translated by Xu Pengfei, Fathom Language Limited)