Page:The practice of water-colour painting (IA cu31924014501971).pdf/35

that superlative master, J. M. Swan, and a crowd of others, whose management of the medium was as skilful as their judgment of artistic essentials was well balanced, must be held in honour as worthy successors of the pioneers by whom the possibilities of water-colour painting were first explored. Of these artists some were simply followers of the earlier masters and, as followers, were content to accept without question the methods as well as the tradition which their masters had handed down to them, but others were seekers after new ways of expression, experimentalists who were anxious to discover fresh applications of the principles by which their art was directed.

The result of this healthy variety of opinion about details of practice has been to keep the vitality of the school at its highest level. Its stability has been ensured by the sober respect which a certain number of the nineteenth-century water-colourists have shown for the example of their leaders, its development has been encouraged by the energy of the other painters who have been