Watercolour is well named: it embodies in its very nature an uncertainty, a fluidity and ambiguity that seems to symbolise its interest and aesthetic importance. Should we speak of a watercolour drawing, or a watercolour painting？ Reporting on the opening of the Old Water-Colour Society's exhibition in 1824, William Henry Pyne recalled:'Just twenty years ago, almost to the very day, ... we met an old friend on entering the new rooms, one of the founders of the society ... "Well," said we, almost simultaneously, "time was, in discussing the title for this society, whether the novel term Painters in Water Colours might not be considered by the world of taste to savor of assumption - who now, on looking round, will feel disposed to question the merits of that title？'Thanks to the extraordinary developments of those decades, the terms 'drawing' and 'painting' are both correctly applied to watercolour, but in different contexts.
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