Excerpt from Catalogue of a Group Exhibition of Water Color Paintings, Pastels, Drawings and Sculpture by American and European Artists: November 19-December 20, Inclusive, 1923
The Brooklyn Museum is especially interested in spreading the taste for water color painting. In the contemplation of the Museum, this is an art, not only replete with charm and with many practical features that should make for popularity, but it is worthy of the most serious study of discriminating art lovers. There is an impression that this branch of painting is without the dignity and importance of oils; that it is suitable only to the amateur with casual training, and that it involves no special difficulties for him. This is far from the truth. An art honored by the life long practice of Winslow Homer, not to cite many other distinguished painters, is not a minor art, nor inferior in its requirements to that of any other department of the fine arts; There are in fact many excellent painters in oil, but to be suc cessful in water color painting in its highest sense takes genius. It must be remembered that water color is a free flowing liquid and every stroke of the brush, accidental or intentional, remains on the drawing paper. The colors cannot be readily expunged or changed without injury to the picture. The artist must from the outset exercise the utmost vigilance. It is essentially the first stroke that counts. For this reason a true transparent watercolor painting is apt to convey in a singularly lucid manner the inspired impulse of the painter, and in consequence one feels closer to his thought than in the often labored and elaborated canvases of the painter m oils.
Water color is especially adapted to the American artist. There is something in the joyous freedom of handling and brilliancy of effect possible in this medium that corresponds to the nature conditions by which the artist is typically surrounded, the sparkle of the somewhat thin atmosphere, the preponderance of sunlight, the vivid coloration and high visibility, and perhaps the absence of that vague atmospheric mystery found every. Where also, except in the tropics. The possibilities in the employment of these elements have been shown by what has already been achieved, and great things may be looked forward to in the future. For this reason the Brooklyn Museum has by its exhibitions laid stress on the importance of water color.
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