own in his
earlier life as an extreme realist.

The change in Turner's work--the broader brush--came in his later
years when oil became his medium of expression, in which, no doubt,
his ability to note and yet sacrifice all unnecessary detail was a
potent factor.

A list of Englishmen greatly prized in their day now follows. Such men
as John Varly, Gilpin, Glover, William Havell (all of whom during some
part of their careers were members of the first Water Color Society
formed in England, in 1804, which body still survives in the old
Water Color Society whose rooms are still open on Pall Mall East) rose
into prominence, their works finding places both in private and public
collections.

This society was in turn succeeded by the New Society of Painters in
Miniature and Water Colors, which came into being in 1807 and went out
of existence in 1812--a victim, says Hughes, of the condition of
public apathy which brought about in the same year a reconstruction of
the older organization under the joint title of the Oil and Water
Color Society, and which eked out a precarious existence until the
birth of the association now known as the Royal Institute for Painters
in Water Colors.

Other names now confront us, among them two men, David Cox and Peter
DeWint, who in their day were considered masters of the medium. These
last struck a new note in water-color, or rather a new technic in its
handling. What Ruskin, the realist, in his "Modern Painters" describes
as "blottesque" was at that time looked upon by both teachers and
students as the one and only means by which white paper could be
properly stained. This method, to quote from a loyal believer in the
English transparent school, and whose enthusiasm is delightful, was
the laying on of the color in washes which filled certain definite
spaces indicated by a pen-and-ink outline.

These washes would indicate, say, a distant tree with a preliminary
tint and a subsequent elaboration; he would do it all in one process,
giving his blot an irregular edge and allowing the color to accumulate
where the shadows required it. His elaborative touches elsewhere were
of the same nature. They were brush blots as distinct from washes. To
this, I think, we may attribute on analysis the freedom of handling
which--though each man has his distinctive method--is characteristic
of both Cox and DeWint. If we add to these two methods of using the
brush a third--its manipulation as though it were