“. . . aqueous media such as ink and watercolor were more portable than egg-tempera or oils, expeditionary artists preferred it for fieldwork, as did Grand Tour diarists. JMW Turner produced oil-paintings for the fashionable art market, but always traveled with watercolors. Oil painting may be more durable than aqueous media, just as canvas is more durable than paper. But whether or not one is better than the other depends on whether one values luxury home goods more than knowledge. One could argue that because cartographers, naturalists, and military topographers were generally smarter than painters, watercolor might reflect greater intellect. At very least it required greater an enormous amount of patience.