题目内容：

 Watercolor is the oldest paints known. It dates back to the early cave men who discovered they could add lifelike qualities to drawings of animals and other figures on the walls of caves by mixing the natural colors found in the earth with water.

Fresco (壁画), one of the greatest of all art forms, is done with watercolor. It is created by mixing paints and water and applying these to wet plaster （灰泥）. Of the thousands of people who stand under Michelangelo’s heroic ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, very few know that they are looking at perhaps the greatest watercolor painting in the world.

The invention of oil painting by the Flemish masters in the fifteenth century made fresco painting go downhill, and for the next several centuries watercolor was used mainly for doing sketches（草图）or as a tool for study. It was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that English painters put back watercolor as a serious art form. The English have a widely-known love for outdoors and also small private pictures. The softness of watercolor had a remarkably strong attraction for them.

The popularity of watercolor continued to grow until the twentieth century. The United States passed England as the center for watercolor, producing such well-known watercolor artists as Thomas Eakins and Andrew Wyeth.

1.The purpose of the passage is to introduce ________.

A. the gradual weakness of fresco painting

B. oil’s power or influence over watercolor

C. the discovery of watercolor in England

D. the start and development of watercolor

2.In the 16^th and 17^th centuries the artists thought ________.

A. watercolor was softer, and thus better.

B. Oil painting lasted longer, and was better.

C. Watercolor wasn’t fit for finished works

D. Watercolor was too hard to use in any works.

3.According to the passage, watercolor painting was put back in England because ______.

A. it was easy to use outdoors     B. it was a strong medium（媒介）

C. it was extremely bright in color.  D. it was suited for popular tastes

4. What would the next paragraph most probably talk about?

   A. The works of famous US watercolor artists.

   B. Modern American oil painters.

   C. The weaknesses of oil as popular paints

   D. Techniques of producing watercolor