Correction: the London send-in deadline for the RWS/Sunday Times watercolour competition is July, not June, 20-21

After 20 years, what was known as the Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander Watercolour Competition is no more, as the Icelandic bank that sponsored it has decided to withdraw from the arrangement. They were 20 years in which new talent was discovered, established names were celebrated and the art of watercolour painting was given the kind of attention not paid it for more than a century.

The thousands of you who enter the contest each year, however, have no need to worry. Not only is it continuing, it is in the safest of hands: those of the Royal Watercolour Society. Founded in 1804, in rebellion against the Royal Academy’s attitude to watercolours - they were badly hung there, and pure watercolourists couldn’t be elected Academicians - the RWS is the oldest organisation of its kind in the world. It has a responsibility to encourage the art of watercolour painting and support those who practise it. That’s what the competition is about, too.

Richard Sorrell, the president of the RWS, is convinced that it can make a real contribution to the continuing success of the competition. “We have the exper-tise,” he says. “We really do know about watercolours and we really know about artists and what their needs are at every stage of their careers. We have our own premises, the Bankside Gallery, and we’re better off financially than most societies of this kind, so we can afford to sponsor a competition we have always been enthusiastic about.”

The RWS has been the recipient of at least three generous bequests in recent years, all from members. The most recent was from David Gluck, who died of cancer at 67 in February 2007. Sorrell thinks it is appropriate that Gluck’s bequest be used to support the competition, as he won it in 2006: “He would have been extremely pleased by what we’re doing with his money.” Gluck, a Yorkshireman, was a follower of the 18th-century watercolourist Alexander Cozens, whose random blot technique he adapted to great effect.

How will the RWS/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition differ from its predecessor? Not in any big way. The first prize will still be £15,000, though the second moves up to £7,000 from £5,000. The runners-up awards will be replaced with two prizes of £1,500 each - the first for a young artist under 30, the second for illustration, or what we are calling “cover art”. This is because the prize is sponsored by Penguin Classics, which will commission the winner to design a book cover. Finally, the London exhibition will be staged, naturally enough, at the RWS’s Bankside HQ.

Many of the usual suspects can be found among this year’s judges: Brian Allen, director of studies at the Paul Mellon Institute; Frank Whitford, art critic for The Sunday Times; Richard Sorrell, president of the RWS; Anthony Green RA; and Penny Johnson, director of the Government Art Collection.

Artists can submit up to three works at venues throughout the UK in June. In London, entries may be handed in as late as June 20 and 21, 2008, the final deadline. Entry costs £15 per work. An exhibition of approximately 120 works will be held at the Bankside Gallery, London SE1, September 10-21.

For application forms, send an SAE to: The Watercolour Competition, Parker Harris Partnership, PO Box 279, Esher, Surrey KT10 8YZ. Forms and information can be downloaded at www.parkerharris.co.uk . For further information, please call 01372 462190 or e-mail RWS@parkerharris.co.uk .

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