Liquid Light: Painting on Watercolours, a new exhibition at Newcastle’s Laing Art Gallery, will celebrate the rich quality and variety of the gallery’s watercolour collection. The exhibition will highlight the work of artists from the ‘Golden Age’ of watercolours complemented by loans, including 19th century artists Edward Burne-Jones and Arthur Melville, as well as contemporary artists Tracey Emin, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Edward Burra, and Jennifer Durrant.

Portable and quick to dry, watercolour has been the choice of many artists to quickly capture the moment they are experiencing, both by the amateur and professional painter. Liquid Light will explore the dichotomy between watercolourists’ drive to record and describe subjects and the growing desire of many artists to capture ephemeral effects of light and weather, as well as the emotional power of landscape. Featuring approximately 200 works from more than 170 artists, the spring-summer exhibition will highlight how artists have explored the expressive potential of the medium itself.

The show includes important pictures from about 1780 to 1880, when British watercolours became established as an influential art movement and were admired in Europe. This was a period when artists developed exceptional skills in watercolour technique and created extremely beautiful naturalistic landscape views filled with light and weather. 

Main image: Joseph M. Turner RA (1775-1851), Dinant sur Meuse, 1839, Laing Art Gallery

Liquid Light: Painting in Watercolours is at Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle from March 19 to August 13, 2022. For more information, visit the website.