† 1. The color of water, blue, greyish-blue. Obs.
c. 1425. MS. Digby 233, fol. 224/2. Loke þat … þe mennes clothing by coloured with venet colour þat is water coloure.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Coleur d’azur & d’eaue, azure, or water colour, skie colour.
2. A pigment for which water and not oil is used as a solvent. Usually in plural. Also fig.
1596. Shaks., 1 Hen. IV., V. i. 80. And neuer yet did Insurrection want Such water-colours to impaint his cause.
1634. J. B[ate], Myst. Nat., 120. Painting may be performed either with water colours or with oyle colours.
1637. Suckling, Aglaura, II. i. The loud talking crowd Will think it all but water colours Laid on for a time.
1674. Grew, Anat. Plants, Anat. Trunks (1682), 138. Smaller Pictures in Water-Colours.
1749. Chesterf., Lett. to Son, 2 Oct. It is all one to me, whether in enamel or in water colours, provided it is but very like you.
1765. Phil. Trans., LVIII. 187. It would be a cheap and usefull water-colour.
1807. Mrs. Grant, Lett. fr. Mountains, I. (ed. 2), Pref. p. viii. It is for such minds as these to distinguish the durable pencil of truth from the water-colours of fiction.
1817. J. Evans, Excurs. Windsor, etc., 168. A most beautiful drawing in water colours.
1859. Dickens, T. Two Cities, II. vi. Lucie’s … work-table and box of water-colours.
1903. M. A. Stein, Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan, xviii. (1904), 271. The thin layer of water-colour with which they are painted has suffered much.
3. A picture painted with water-colors.
1854. Rossetti, in Atlantic Monthly (1896), May, 589/2. I shall make him a small water-colour in exchange.
1882. Besant, All Sorts, xxvi. (1898), 183. It was a pleasant sunny room,… nor … was it hung with immense pictures of game and fruit, but with light and bright water-colours.
1899. Crockett, Kit Kennedy, 399. There was Landhaven itself, glittering in the morning light, a water-colour in white and red, as the wet tiles took the sun, and the warmth beneath melted the thin snow.
4. The art or method of painting with water-colors.
1843. Ruskin, Mod. Paint., I. II. I. vii. § 19. The more specific study of mountains seems to have coincided with the more dexterous practice of water-colour.
1909. C. J. Holmes, Picture-making, 170. In water colour proper the washes of colour are laid directly on the paper, usually over a faint pencil outline.
5. attrib., as water-colo(u)r cake, drawing, exhibition, painting.
1698. T. Froger, Voy., 112. A great many fine Water-colour Paintings, that are brought hither from Rome.
1839. Hood, Literary & Lit., 52. Men that deal in water-colour cakes.
1856. Miss Yonge, Daisy Chain, II. iii. A very pretty drawing … which had been in the water-colour exhibition.
1862. W. Sandby, R. Acad., I. 103. The founder of the English school of water-colour painting.
1876. S. Redgrave, Catal. Water-Col. Paintings, 15. When water colour drawing … emerged from mere Indian ink or other monochrome tint.
1880. Miss Braddon, Just as I am, vii. Water-colour drawings on the wall.
