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Although figurative watercolor artists emerged in the later eighteenth century, producing distinguished and popular work, it was landscape painters who developed the medium as a distinctive branch of British art in its own right. This was true in two senses. First, artists such as John Robert Cozens (cat. nos. 17-20) and John "Warwick" Smith (cat. nos. 15-16) pioneered technical developments that exploited the unique properties of watercolors. Second, landscapists formed clubs and societies for sketching and discussion that helped build an esprit de corps among watercolorists in the final years of the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the impetus behind these shifts tended to come not from the professional artists alone, but from the intervention of influential amateurs. Chief among them was Dr. Thomas Monro, the physician who treated John Robert Cozens in his final illness. Monro formed an informal "academy." where young artists were paid to spend their evenings copying watercolors from his own collection, which included works by the likes of Thomas Hearne (cat. nos. 13-14) and Cozens. --
Joshua Cristall was one of Monro's protégés and was encouraged by him to adopt watercolor painting. His early years had been somewhat aimless, as his aspiration to become an artist had been regularly thwarted. Opposition from Cristall's father forced him into various unsatisfying apprenticeships and desk jobs. Mary Wollstonecraft once roundly advised the would-be artist to stop complaining about such employment and instead "determine like a man whether Drawing is to be the business or amusement of your future life." He chose business and entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1792, when he was already twenty-eight. It was there that he was introduced to Monro's academy and the other artists in his circle.

Cristall's preference was for ambitious figurative watercolors, often with classical subject matter, but he did paint and exhibit landscapes. This watercolor was probably the product of a tour of Wales he made in 1803 with Cornelius Varley (cat. no. 56). The first period of war with Revolutionary France between 1793 and 1802 temporarily closed the Continent to British tourists, forcing artists into renewed study on Britain's native landscapes. Although peace had been restored temporarily, Cristall and Varley preferred the safer and cheaper option of continuing to explore British sites. While this view of cloud-covered mountaintops achieves a sublimity akin to that of Alexander Cozens (cat. nos. 2-3), the attempt to capture the precise atmospheric conditions marks a shift in the depiction of nature. Artists such as John Robert Cozens or "Warwick" Smith had approached atmosphere for pictorial effect. Here the emphasis is more scientific, with Cristall carefully rendering the low lying stratus clouds, shifting dawn colors, and the patch of green landscape glimpsed through the cloud. This more scientific approach can perhaps be attributed to Cornelius Varley, who had inherited his uncle's scientific interests and was willing to take risks to explore his passion for natural phenomena.

His diary of the tour with Cristall records the pair risking life and limb on the mountains of Wales in order to witness unusual atmospheric conditions such as this. This was not their only near miss with death. Although the pair may have hoped to avoid the uneasy political situation on the Continent by traveling to Wales, the presence of two strangers with sketch pads attracted suspicions. Both were mistaken for French spies by local Welsh miners, and only the timely intervention of the magistrate's wife prevented them from being summarily lynched.

Matthew Hargraves

Hargraves, Matthew, and Scott Wilcox. Great British Watercolors: from the Paul Mellon collection. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2007, p. 84, no. 35