Blue Sea

Southall was one of the leading practitioners of the tempera revival movement in late 19th-century Britain, which sought a return to traditional artistic techniques that required a deeper attention to craft, exemplified by the notoriously labor-intensive medium used during the Renaissance.
Though this charming seascape was likely painted with watercolor, rather then egg-based tempera, Southall has applied the pigment unconventionally to mimic the appearance of the older medium. Rather than working in thin washes of wet color, he applied multiple thin layers of dense, dry pigment with little water added, allowing him to attain extraordinary precision and intense opacity, qualities not usually associated with watercolors.