I just discovered Watercolour World and I’m so impressed with this project. The website states it is “The known world before photography”. Capturing the known world really was the purpose of art pre-camera. The more realistic art was back then, the more useful it was, because it was literally documenting something that cameras could not, because they didn’t exist yet. Watercolor was a nice quick and easy way to do sketches as well as more detailed paintings of every day life and common people. As everyone now has cell phones and cameras, there is really no need for art to document anything, which is what makes looking at older artwork so amazing. Another facet of these paintings is that you can see the differences in the landscapes to how they look now, and and get an idea of how environmental changes have affected our world. Read more below and see examples.
These images are often hard to come by, however, thanks to Watercolour World we are now able to look back into the natural history of our planet and see exactly what certain parts of the Earth’s landscape looked like long before we even understood the effects of climate change.
Hosting a digital library of watercolour paintings that date back to before 1900, Watercolour World documents these images and provides us with an accurate insight into the changes that have occurred to our landscapes and seascapes over the last 120 years. Watercolour World is supported by Javad Marandi from the Marandi Foundation, an organisation that is dedicated to providing opportunities in education for disadvantaged young people in the UK and giving them access to art and culture. …
The Changing Landscape
One of the most powerful pieces of art displayed on Watercolour World was painted by Joseph Mallard William Turner and dates back to 1804. This beautiful watercolour painting depicts the Glacier des Bossons and Mer de Glas at St. Gotthard Pass, which at the time was described as ‘Flowing rivers of ice, 200 feet deep’:
And now of course the ice is nearly gone. Below is a gallery sample of the hundreds of watercolors they have online. All are from before cameras existed!
