Featuring approximately 200 works from more than 170 artists, this large exhibition features the Laing Art Gallery's nationally significant collection of watercolours, spanning more than three centuries of art. The show includes important pictures from the 'golden age' from about 1780 to 1880, when British watercolours became established as an influential art movement, admired in Europe. 

Landscape painting was the initial focus of this, with artists achieving pictures than glowed with light or recreated the sensation of weather, generating drama and emotion. Artists developed sophisticated techniques for handling both transparent and opaque watercolours, aided by an expanding range of paint colours. Increasingly, watercolourists travelled around Britain and abroad, recording landscape vistas, town views and novel sights.