Watercolour World

The charity’s joint patrons are King Charles III[2] and Queen Camilla. The official launch was held at the Royal Academy of Arts on 31 January 2019.[3] The Watercolour World is supported financially by its co-founder, Javad Marandi through the Marandi Foundation.[4][5] Sir Charles Saumarez Smith is chairman of the trustees and Fred Hohler is executive director of the charity.[6]

The project catalogues and makes freely available watercolours of identifiable places and landscapes, primarily drawn between 1750 and 1900.[7] Images are taken from private, governmental and military collections − the latter stemming from the fact that officers at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich studied drawing and were taught how to survey landscapes by artists such as Paul Sandby.[8] The Watercolour World is of use to historians and climate change scientists because it shows how the world looked prior to the age of photography.[9] For example, the extent of the loss of Himalayan ice fields is obvious from images dating back to the 1840s.[10] The charity collates material from around the globe: the Rijksmuseum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans have contributed images alongside the British Museum, the Royal Collection and Chatsworth.[6][9]