Are you subscribed to your nearest city’s event newsletter? If you’re not and crave more cultural things to do, it’s a must. I recently got on board with Forever Edinburgh to be in the know about interesting things happening, and was happy to know about a Turner exhibition going on at the Royal Scottish Academy.

Every month of January since 1901, the famous Turner watercolours bequeathed by Henry Vaughan are put on display to be admired by everyone for free, as per his request. The idea is for people to enjoy something beautiful in a month short in daylight – this also serving the purpose of protecting the light-sensitive artwork.

It always warms my heart to know these events are popular, especially when they’ve been happening for more than a century. The room had a constant flow of people coming to admire the artwork.

My favourite part was that wood cabinet in the middle of the room, where pigments and other accoutrements were shown.

Here is what the exhibit label says:

“Watercolour paint box, including Reeves point cakes and lumps of gum arabic [sic], late 19th century.

This box belonged to Elizabeth Jane Peckover (1859-1930), an amateur watercolour painter. It is part of the archive of her son, the Surrealist artist Roland Penrose (1900-1984).

Glass Muller

This tool was used to grind colour pigment down to a fine powder. This would then be combined with water-soluble gum to make paint.”

I’m such a sucker for this type of thing – I love the idea that someone actually used these objects to create art. I like the idea that objects retain the memory of whomever used them, and that through them you might sense their personality.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy to photograph the watercolours, since they’re all protected behind reflective glass. Here are a couple of images nonetheless.

Detail

Before moving to the UK, I genuinely thought Turner’s impressive golden landscape hues were completely made up. You see, Mediterranean light is just so much whiter that it never occurred to me that these lovely colours actually existed in Nature. Now it’s one of my favourite things about British winters.

Lastly, did you know Turner learned watercolour by copying other artists? This was a most common way to improve back then, and this master was no exception. The watercolour below feels so different from what we’ve grown used to seeing from Turner that it still feels weird for me to consider it a genuine er, “Turner copy.”

I hope you enjoyed coming with me on this little watercolour tour and that it might have gotten your creative juices flowing! Let me know about recent artistic outings of yours in the comment section, or whether you have any recommendations for me in Edinburgh. Thanks for reading.