Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding

Large and highly detailed exhibition watercolors like this seascape were a specialty of Anthony Vandyke
Copley Fielding, perhaps the most prolific and commercially successful watercolor painter of his generation.
This view of the chalk cliffs below Culver Down on the Isle of Wight uses many of his favorite
technical tricks, such as subtle scraping on the paper surface to reveal white highlights and blotting
with bread to create the mottled texture of the clouds. By repeating these formulae, Fielding learned
to work quickly and satisfy the public demand for his work, consistently outselling contemporaries like
David Cox, whose work appears to the far left. Serving as President of the Society of Painters in Water
Colours for over three decades, Fielding exhibited a total of 1,748 watercolors during his lifetime.