The following essay comes from the Studio, No. 71, February 1899, pp.3-11. Unfortunately, the accompanying illustration were of poor quality, and have not been included. — Jacqueline Banerjee
n the practice of water-colour painting the English School has always
occupied a position quite peculiar to itself, one
that is scarcely to be paralleled in the art history of
any other country. Not only is the number of
artists amongst us who devote themselves to this
class of production very large indeed, but there is
also in the range of their performance a remarkable
variety and comprehensiveness of expression.
Water-colour, as they handle it, lends itself to all
sorts of pictorial purposes, and makes its value as
an executive medium felt in ways that are curiously
different.
No set and definite mode of working is common to those members of our school who find in this technical device their most useful opportunities; each man has his own fashion of applying its essential principles so as to turn them to account in the manner best calculated to lead him in the direction he desires, and full advantage is taken by the more thoughtful workers of the pleasant peculiarities of the medium itself.
The special popularity of water-colours with both the producers and purchasers of art work in this country is probably to be explained on the ground of a particular agreement between the subtleties of the craft and those of the atmospheric conditions that prevail in this part of the world. This method of work lends itself curiously well to the realisation of open-air effects. It gives, as nothing else will, the delicacy and luminosity of daylight, and the gentle gradations of colour that result from the aerial varieties of our climate. Our artists, or at all events a large section of them, know that the limitations of oil painting are such that, if they occupy themselves exclusively with the weightier medium, they will be debarred from attempting many subjects that are extremely worthy of pictorial record; and they turn, as a matter of course, to a technical process which widens their scope and adds opportunities of real moment. Out of this feeling has grown the custom, which is really characteristic of our school, of making in practice a distinction between different classes of material, and of using oil or water-colour alternatively according to the nature of the motive selected for illustration. No master could be better quoted in evidence of this custom of selection than Turner. His canvases were very different both in manner and in intention from the exquisite drawings which he produced in such profusion during his amazingly fertile life; and he never made the mistake of striving to give form to his imaginings by the aid of inappropriate technicalities. The magnificent tone contrasts and rich colour harmonies that were so impressive when he handled them in oils would have been opaque, dull, and unconvincing if he had been so ill advised as to attempt to present them in water- colour; and similarly the exquisite refinement of his studies of pearly atmosphere, and of aerial colour in finitely gradated, would have become weak and commonplace if he had tried to render them by solid painting instead of transparent washes. He knew instinctively what was the right way of working, and made his choice with unvarying discretion. [3/4]
Happily his influence is still active to guide the painters of our own time in their use of materials. The tradition which he helped to establish remains to prevent modern workers from wasting their energies in useless efforts to make their materials do what is impossible, and is still powerful to save many a capable artist from the disappointment of ineffectual labour. To his example, and that of other art leaders like himself, is due the thoroughly wholesome appreciation of technical necessities which distinguishes our water-colourists as a class. They have an admirable authority to follow in their professional practice; and in dealing with the wealth of subject-matter, of the kind that suits them best, which is accessible in the country in which they live, they are encouraged to study the necessary correctness of relation between the mode of interpretation and the type of nature they wish to illustrate. By this very useful training, and by the number of chances which they have of learning to make distinctions between motives, they have gained a breadth of view which no other school can boast, and have justified themselves as the exponents of a national art, created and maintained by their shrewd understanding of natural conditions.
It follows almost necessarily that the English water-colour school, with its traditions and the circumstances of its development, is eminently a school of landscape. For one thing, the medium itself is less well adapted than oils for the treatment of the figure; and, for another, our artists have so many excellent reasons for preferring out-of-door subjects that they have generally set themselves, at all events in water-colour work, to interpret landscape rather than the human subject. Yet, widespread as this preference is, it cannot be said that there is any unpleasant monotony in their general practice. There are so many methods of using even the same medium open to men who have the courage to look at Nature in their own way, that the temptation to copy any particular master can be resisted without a very serious struggle. We have, as a consequence, in the output of our contemporary water-colourists almost all the possible phases of expression, and the very widest range of executive manner from the masculine suggestions of Mr. Arthur Melville to the precise and pedantic realities of Mr. Birket Foster. But we have, also, much work that steers the safe middle course between splendid eccentricity and tame commonplace; work that shows legitimate [4/7] aspirations after originality without disregard for accepted tradition.
To this class belongs the art of Mr. Wilfrid Ball, who has the happy faculty of choosing material that is fresh and attractive, and the capacity to treat it properly. His style is thoroughly individual, distinguished by absolute straightforwardness of expression, and free from those affectations which are so apt to result in unintelligent mannerism. He is a sincere student of Nature, with a cultivated taste in selection that guides him very securely, and enables him to draw the right distinction between subjects that are paintable on account of their inherent charm and those that claim notice merely because they are abnormal or startling. It is not at all his aim to surprise the mass of the public by any appeal to their curiosity, or to get himself talked about because he wilfully elects to pose as a strange departure from the beaten track. He is far more anxious to convince the few who have the judgment to appreciate the earnestness of an artistic intention that is based upon a careful comparison of the Nature with the fancies of the masters of his craft. But he is by no means an imitator, nor does he merely repeat the facts of what his predecessors have already stated quite explicitly, and expect consideration on account of his fidelity to accepted authorities. The style that he has is sound because it is thoughtful and well balanced, the natural manner of a man who knows his subject by heart, but has built up convictions of his own on a safe foundation of experience.
Something of this individuality is doubtless the outcome of an instinct for independence, but, partly at least, it is due to the circumstances of his training in art matters. His history is, like that of so many men who have come to the front in the painter’s profession, a record of industrious effort carried on under unpromising conditions. The pursuit of art was by no means the one originally mapped out for him, nor did it, indeed, become possible to him until after he had spent some time in an occupation of a very different kind. His earlier years were given up to work in the City, where he was engaged in an accountant’s office, a curiously inappropriate place for a youth who felt inclinations towards practical aestheticism. But he had the courage to try, in the intervals of his City drudgery, to acquire a certain amount of knowledge of art matters, and night after night, after he left the office, he betook himself to Heatherley’s School of Art to draw from life and the antique. In this way he received the only art instruction that was ever possible for him to get; all the rest of his experience he had to make for himself when and how he could. At least he had no school traditions worth considering to alter the [7/8] natural trend of his opinions; he was able, without having to struggle against a system of education in which he did not believe, to develop his own personal creed, and to make the most of his instinctive inclinations towards particular forms of expression.
Fortunately he was by no means wanting in determination. He had an energetic temperament, and was physically a strong man, an athlete, a noted member of the London Athletic Club, and the winner of quite an array of prizes for running, walking, rowing, and other sports of the same type. His force of character was great enough to make his progress in the profession of art quite a rapid affair. In 1877, indeed, while he was still tied to his City desk, he exhibited an etching at the Academy; and during the next twelve years he acquired so much proficiency in this branch of practice that he gained, for some Thames-side subjects, the warm praise of Mr. Whistler, and, in 1889, an honourable mention for his Venice from the Lido, shown in the Paris Salon. Still, the greater part of the work he has done during the twenty years of his career as an artist has been in water-colour, and he ranks now high among the men who are to-day noted for their skill in this medium. His digressions into oil-painting have been few but important, for both at the Academy and New Gallery he has occasionally shown large canvases, one of which, Sleepy Holland, a brilliant study of evening colour, was at the New Gallery as recently as 1897.
As a rule, however, he sends but little to the larger public galleries, and prefers to exhibit his water-colours under the more favourable conditions of the “one man show.” Of these he has organised several, which have served as pleasant records of his travels in many lands. In 1886 a set of drawings of the Norfolk Broads appeared at Mr. Dunthorne’s gallery; and he has held at the same place three other little exhibitions of a very charming kind — Venice in 1887, Holland in 1889, and Nuremburg and Rothenburg in 1891; and in 1893 Messrs. Agnew, who have for some years included groups of his drawings in their spring exhibitions, showed specially his Egypt collection. Now the latest assertion of his powers is being made in the galleries of the Fine Art Society, where are gathered a number of records of English scenery, attractive renderings of pretty bits in the Eastern Counties and Surrey, on the Norfolk Broads, at Durham, York, Lincoln, and Ely, and on the Yorkshire coast. These drawings, like the others by [8/11] which he has made himself known, have particular claims to attention as instances of well-judged and soundly applied technical effort. They show the purity of his method and the grace of his style convincingly enough, and prove how thoroughly he has mastered the best principles of the school to which he belongs. They are neither commonplace in their literal accuracy nor exaggerated in their adaptation, but combine agreeably respect for the subject selected with true feeling for elegance of composition and arrangement. Mr. Ball, indeed, carries on with the completest discretion the traditions that have made English water-colour respected all over the world; and he has a right to the appreciation he has gained, because he understands the obligations which are imposed upon him by his position in the modern art movement.
Bibliography
Ball, Wilfrid. Hampshire Water-Colours. London: A & C Black, 1913. Internet Archive. Contributed by the University of California Libraries. Web. 7 September 2022.
_____. Sussex. London: A & C Black, 1906. Internet Archive. Contributed by the Getty Research Institute. Web. 7 September 2022.
_____. Winchester. London: A & C Black, 1910. Internet Archive. Contributed by the University of California Libraries. Web. 7 September 2022.
"Wilfrid Ball." Modern Etchers: Short Biographical Sketches of the Leading Etchers of the Present Day ("obtained from the subjects themselves"). Baltimore: David Bendann, 1891. 7-8. Google Books Free Ebook.
"Wilfrid Ball, Etcher and Water-Colour Painter." The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art. Vol. 16 (No. 71, February 1899): 3-11. Internet Archive. Sponsored by the Kahle-Austin Foundation. Web. 7 September 2022.
Created 7 September 2022