Albrecht Durer, one of the foremost figures of the Northern Renaissance, was a German theorist, painter and printmaker from Nuremberg. Durer's work as a landscape artist in watercolor raised the sensitivity of the medium while marking him as one of Europe's first landscape painters. John White brought watercolor painting to America, while on Sir Walter Raleigh's North American expedition in 1585. White's watercolor sketches, which depict Native Americans as well as plants and animals, provide us with some of the earliest views of the New World.
William Blake, the poet and watercolor artist from the 1700s, created art using watercolor painting in tandem with a technique reminiscent of offset printing. Blake applied watercolors to glass, porcelain or glazed paper, then transferred his images to watercolor paper. He then painted over the watercolor paper with opaque paint, to create a more visually striking effect. Like Blake, many artists introduced new styles in the 1700s; artists using the watercolor wash style, for instance, used thin layers of wash to build color.
J.M.W. Turner is recognized as one of the finest landscape artists, depicting not only landscapes but his illuminated, emotional experience of the landscapes. Born in 1775, J.M.W. Turner spent most of his education and life devoting himself to art, and he was one of the few artists of his era who was successful throughout his career. Turner developed the wet-on-wet method of painting, allowing paint to flow freely in the direction of his brush and using dry brush strokes on top of dried paint to create contrast.
Homer Winslow and Thomas Eakins provided some of the first paintings depicting reality. Homer Winslow painted the reality of the Civil War, in the form of intimate moments of camp and social life. Eakins, for his part, was one of the first painters to depict his subjects as they really appeared, not as they wished to be seen. Walt Whitman praised Eakins for this tendency, writing, "“I never knew of but one artist, and this is Tom Eakins, who could resist the temptation to see what they think ought to be rather than what is.”