A new exhibition opened this week at Tate Britain, devoted to understanding what has often been considered a particularly British art form of which William Blake was a particular devotee.

Titled simply "Watercolour", the exhibition, which runs from 16 February to 21 August 2011, looks at the often neglected impact of this medium over 800 years. Described as "the most ambitious exhibition about watercolour ever to be staged", it covers a wide range of formats from miniatures and manuscript illustration to extensive landscape paintings that are often neglected in favour of oil.

Artists on display in "Watercolour" include JMW Turner, Paul Nash, David Jones, Anish Kapoor and Tracey Emin - as well, of course, as William Blake.  In his Descriptive Catalogue of 1809, Blake praised watercolour (which he described as fresco) in the following, typically extravagant but also subtly perceptive, terms:

Fresco Painting is properly Miniature, or Enamel Painting; every thing in Fresco is as high finished as Miniature or Enamel, although in Works larger than Life. The Art has been lost: I have recovered it. How this was done, will be told, together with the whole Process, in a Work on Art, now in the Press. The ignorant Insults of Individuals will not hinder me from doing my duty to my Art. Fresco Painting, as it is now practised, is like most other things, the contrary of what it pretends to be.

Tate Britain is also running a blog on the exhibition that will include articles by both the curators involved in the show and various other public figures such as David Attenborough and contemporary artists included in the exhibition.

"Watercolour" at Tate Britain: 16 February - 21 August 2011. Entrance fee: £12.70/£10.90 concessions. For more information visit http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/watercolour/default.shtm.