Water-colour Quotes

It was Constable's persuasion that you should always work in one material: if a water-colour painter, that you should take Nature in water-colour; if an oil-painter, in oil. Not that he rigidly carried out his own views, as he always had a small sketchbook with him in which he noted down anything that struck him; but his sketching, both in water-colour and pencil, was very inferior to his oils. (John Constable)
Henry Howard, R.A., was an early friend of my father's; and he and Turner have stayed with us at Heston. I remember, when I was about five years old, going to Penn, in Buckinghamshire, with Howard, Turner, and my father [c. 1812]; all of them in search of the picturesque. We went in a post-chaise, and, when tired, my father carried me pick-a-back. We came to a halt in a grove or copse where luxuriated wild flowers in profusion. It was a charming day; and, though so many 'years bygone' I can see now vividly before me my father and Howard, both standing legs a-straddle, and Turner at a little distance in a ditch, all hard at work at the easthetical. After a while Turner emerged from his retreat with a capital water-colour, with which Howard and my father were in raptures. He said he got into the ditch to avoid the sun, but Howard whispered my father that it was to avoid showing his modus operandi. I have heard this from my father subsequently.. View quote
J. M. W. Turner