 | Paul Sandby's 1794 work "A View of Vinters at Boxley, Kent, with Mr. Whatman's Turkey Paper Mills" was created on a wove paper for which Turkey Mill became renowned. |
The myriad ways that advances in the technology of papermaking affected the development of watercolor painting in 18th-century England is the focus of a new exhibition opening at the Yale Center for British Art.
"Mr. Whatman's Mill: Papermaking and the Art of Watercolor in 18th-Century Britain" will be on view Feb. 22-June 4. The exhibition will feature 30 watercolors and prints from the center's holdings (plus two on loan from the British Museum), as well as 40 works pertaining to the history of papermaking in 18th- and 19th-century England. It was organized by Theresa Fairbanks Harris, chief conservator at the British Art Center, and Scott Wilcox, curator of prints and drawings at the museum, with assistance from Andrea Wolk, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of the History of Art.
At the heart of the exhibition will be "A View of Vinters at Boxley, Kent, with Mr. Whatman's Turkey Paper Mills" by Paul Sandby, royal academician and one of Britain's foremost watercolor painters. Commissioned in 1794 by the papermaker James Whatman the Younger, the watercolor was painted on a large sheet of "Whatman" paper and depicted Whatman's home and his celebrated paper mill in Kent.
Kent was famous for its papermaking industry. Its numerous rivers provided power to operate the paper mills and transport materials. Whatman's Turkey Mill, located on the River Len, helped capture the world market for quality white paper in the early 18th century, formerly dominated by imports from the continent, especially France and Holland.
Turkey Mill began as a fulling mill for cleansing and thickening wool cloth and was converted to a paper mill in the mid-17th century by James Whatman the Elder (1702-1759), originally a tanner.
Shortly before his death, Whatman the Elder developed a wove paper for which Turkey Mill became renowned. Whatman used a mold of fine woven wire and wood to produce the paper's smooth, uniform surface of wove paper. Previously, laid paper was the standard, and the mold used to create laid paper had a gridwork of laid wires that imparted their texture onto the surface of the paper.
Whatman's wove paper played a major role in the development of English watercolor painting, say Harris and Wilcox, because its smooth surface lacked the furrows of traditional laid paper which caused pigment to puddle on the page. In addition, it was soaked in a gelatin bath of hoofs and bones to make it extremely strong and less absorbent. Paint moved easily over its surface and multiple layers could be applied and then wiped, scratched or scraped away without damaging the paper. These complicated subtractive techniques were brought to the highest level of virtuosity by J.M.W. Turner, who worked regularly on Whatman paper, note the exhibit organizers.
Other leading artists of the time, such as John Robert Cozens, John Sell Cotman and Cornelius Varley also used Whatman paper. Indeed, note Harris and Wilcox, many of the masterpieces of Romantic watercolor painting of the early 19th century are on paper bearing the watermark "J. Whatman" or "J. Whatman/Turkey Mill." The exhibition features a gallery of works by these artists painted on Whatman paper.
As early as the 1760s, when wove paper was not yet widely available to artists, Thomas Gainsborough was anxious to use it for his watercolors, note the organizers. In 1767, he wrote to bookseller James Dodsley in hope of obtaining some: "... it being what I have long been in search of for making wash'd Drawings upon ... There is so little impression of the Wires, and those so very fine, that the surface is like vellum." Comparisons of paintings on wove versus laid paper will also be on view, including works by Gainsborough and John "Warwick" Smith.
James Whatman the Younger (1741-1798) perfected his father's wove paper and made Whatman's Turkey Mill the largest and most influential paper mill in England. He was responsible for many important developments in the field of papermaking, note the organizers, improving the brightness of paper and producing the largest sheet of handmade paper ever created, called Antiquarian. Named for the Society of Antiquaries that commissioned it, Antiquarian measured 53 x 31 inches and required nine men to make it using a lever system. Previously, the size of a piece of paper was limited to the span of a vatman's arms. The Society of Antiquaries needed the paper in order to make a print depicting Henry VIII meeting Francis I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. This "Field of Gold" print is on view in the exhibition.
Although it no longer functions as a working mill, the complex of buildings at Turkey Mill survives as a conference center and business complex. Today, paper watermarked "Whatman" is produced at the nearby Springfield Mill, owned by Whatman International PLC, which produces a range of machine-made watercolor paper. It also specializes in a variety of scientific filter and forensic papers.
In conjunction with the exhibit, the Yale University Press has published "Papermaking and the Art of Watercolor in 18th-Century Britain: Paul Sandby and the Whatman Paper Mill." The book, which will be on sale in the museum shop, includes essays by Harris and Wilcox; Stephen Daniels, professor of cultural geography at the University of Nottingham; paper historian Maureen Green; and paper scientist Michael Fuller.
The Yale Center for British Art, located at 1080 Chapel St., is open to the public free of charge 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. The building is wheelchair accessible. For further information, call (203) 432-2800 or visit the website at www.yale.edu/ycba.
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