Watercolour is paint thinned with water and laid on paper, so the white of the paper does the work that white paint does in oils. It goes on in washes, it dries fast, and it is unforgiving, because a mark that is wrong cannot simply be painted over.
That speed is why so many of them were painted on the spot. A watercolour box, a block of paper and a jar of water travelled easily, and people took them on holidays, walking trips and sketching tours, so what you are looking at is very often a record of a real afternoon in a real place, finished before the light changed. Buy one of a place you know and you are seeing it as it looked to somebody who was standing there.
Britain took the medium seriously. Watercolour was taught in schools and to amateurs right through the nineteenth century, and exhibited alongside oils, which is why so much competent work survives by artists whose names never became well known.
Because they are on paper, condition is worth understanding. Light fades watercolour pigment permanently, and damp brings foxing, the small rust-brown spots that appear on old paper. Both are common in pieces of this age and are shown in the photographs.
New pieces come in a few at a time, so it is worth looking again another time if nothing here is right.
