ARTHUR MELVILLE-A BRILLIANT WATERCOLOURIST

If you should ask me for the name of the cleverest, most cunning watercolourist of all I would unhesitatingly propose the name of Arthur Melville. This Scotsman who lived only for 46 years and died in 1904, evolved a complex and extraordinarily rich method of working. This can be described but it is difficult to comprehend without examination of the work itself.

Melville is at the  extreme of the nineteenth century  trend to elaborate and more complex effects which earlier masters such as J R Cozens would scarcely have recognised. It isn't difficult to describe the mehanics of Melville's technique. The more important aspects of how he visualised and developed his work is another matter. The certainties and ambiguities which he allows are what matters here. Not everything is painted with overall Pre-Raphaelite evenness-far from it. Blots and pools of watercolour are all part of the process.And so is the lifting or wiping out of colour. Melville is  master of the lost and found contour.

His  watercolour subjects are typically either Scottish landscapes, scenes from southern English  landscape or  Spanish andOrientalist subjects. His brilliant technique is particularly suitable for the painting of intense contrasts of light and shade.

HIS TECHNIQUE

Take a sheet of watercolour paper and flood it with an even coating of white. Let  this dry and repeat the process if you wish.

If you have already painted in watercolour you may be thinking, "What, do you really mean that I should paint on such a surface? Won't the wash become immediately corrupted by the underlying white?" My answer is that will surely happen if you are indecisive and push the paint about too much. But if you are certain and unhesitating in placing your colour, you should not have a problem.This should give you some idea of the deliberateness of Melville's method. Some considerable previsualisation  must be happening here. And  you would be right.You can hardly establish an architectural setting without considerable forethought. The painting of figures and groups of figures and animals is another matter.

A Moorish Procession-National Gallery of Scotland

The human element, often a crowd or group of figures is  treated as a group and not as an assembly of individuals. Once you start to look for individuals you will see the economy with which Melville works. Some parts are vague and appear almost as ghost images do on a photographic negative.In the original of the work shown above the  animal at left appears as a wraith like figure. So too the persons next to it.

The Little Bullfight "Bravo Toro!" Victoria & Albert Museum

This technique  allows the artist to remove or sponge out paint so that a figure may appear as partly solid ad partly wraith like through the trace left behind. Melville exploits this in Bravo Toro where the dust and smoke of a bullring are evoked. He does not paint a dust cloud over figures but rather sponges out something which is already there.Sponging out is a venerable watercolour technique but here Melville is wiping into the original white ground beneath-hence the peculiar subtlety of the blurring effect. Certainty and ambiguity once more.

When the white ground is dry you may work on it.Very liquid washes may be appropriate, so too puddles of very wet paint, also blots and abstract dabs which may meld together in the eye to produce an image.If you want to make a correction you may use a sponge or rag and remove the paint with it. You will be left with a white ground as a blurred, unfocused patch.The white ground gives added luminosity to the
work-all the more essential for these orientalist paintings.

There are accounts of him placing a sheet of glass over a painting so that he could try out the effects  he was working with. I am a little sceptical about that idea because  glass is not receptive to watercolour. But even if untrue it does say something about the artist's attitude to his craft.

There is little literature on Melville and most is rare and extremely expensive to purchase.The clearest short account is in  volume three of Martin Hardie's history of British Watercolour Painters.

Excellent news: The National Gallery of Scotland is planning an exhibition on Arthur Melville from Oct 10 2015 to 17 Jan 2016.This will be the first substantial grouping of his work in a generation and will hopefully result in a good catalogue with excellent illustrations.

Water-Colour Painting in Britain, Vol 3, The Victorian Period,by  Martin Hardie, London 1968.