The rise in popularity of watercolour painting in Britain coincided with the availability of new commercial painting products. Artists’ colour men, the retailers of art materials during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were mostly based in London and vied for the attentions of amateur and professional artists alike. The emphasis of the products was on convenience (such as the new watercolour boards which lent themselves to outdoor sketching) and the permanence of pigments, for which inve[..]