The Francis Lehman Loeb Art Center has announced the opening of Catching Light: European and American Watercolors from the Permanent Collection, which will highlight masterworks of the medium from the 18th through 20th centuries, on view May 8 through July 26, 2009.

About the show:

Artists have treasured the free-flowing, luminous qualities of watercolor for centuries. However, only in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth centuries did this medium come into its own with works by English and French artists. Featured in the exhibition from this period are light-filled watercolors by J. M. W. Turner, John Ruskin, John Sell Cotman, John Webber, Anthony Vandyke Copley, Joseph Michael Gandy, Augustin Pugin, and Charles-Louis Clerisseau. Their sun-cloaked landscapes, picturesque ruins, and architectural views form poetic documents to their makers' creative talents and to the era's insistence on keen observation.

Pictured above: The Checkered Dress (Portrait of O’Keeffe) by Hilda Belcher (American 1881-1963)