aquatint

aquatint. A printmaking method related to etching but producing finely granulated tonal areas rather than lines; the term applies also to a print made by this method. There are several variants of the technique, but in essence the process is as follows. A metal plate is sprinkled with acid-resistant resin, which is fused to the plate by heating. When the plate is immersed in an acid bath the acid bites between the tiny particles of resin, creating correspondingly tiny cavities in the metal to hold the ink; the evenly granulated surface produced in this way will eventually print as a speckled grey tone, the coarseness or fineness of the texture depending on the size and density of the grains of resin. The design is created by drawing on the plate with acid-resistant varnish, and variety of tone is obtained in stages by a process called ‘stopping out’—that is, progressively varnishing over areas that have been sufficiently bitten and then re-immersing the plate in the acid (the longer the acid bites, the darker the tone). This method of working means that the artist has to create the image in negative, since the areas that are covered with varnish from the beginning (the initial design) will print white.

A version of aquatint was first used in the Netherlands in the mid-17th century (at about the same time as mezzotint was invented), but it initially made almost no impact. The technique then lay dormant until a satisfactory system was evolved by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (1733–81), whose first plates date from 1768. From France the technique soon spread to England, a country especially partial to tonal methods of printmaking, and it was much used there in the late 18th and early 19th centuries for reproducing the luminosity and transparency of watercolours (the combination of ‘aqua’ and ‘tint’ in the name suggests its qualities). Colour could be added by hand or by using separate plates with different coloured inks.

The principal English pioneer of aquatint was Paul Sandby, who published his first examples in 1775 and is said to have coined the term. He was resourceful in technique, inventing a new process for preparing the metal plate—the spirit-ground method. In this, resin dissolved in alcohol is poured over the plate, the evaporation of the spirit leaving the resin to crystallize so as to produce a regularly granulated ground. He combined this process with a technique known as sugar aquatint (or sugar-lift aquatint or lift-ground etching), which allows the artist to make the design positively rather than negatively and therefore to work with greater spontaneity. The design is made directly on the plate with a fluid (typically black ink or watercolour) in which sugar has been dissolved, applied either by pen or by brush. The plate is then varnished and immersed in lukewarm water. While under water the sugar swells, lifts off the plate, and dislodges the varnish, leaving the bare copper beneath, the result being a copper plate covered with varnish except where the drawing was made with sugar solution. An aquatint ground is next laid over the whole surface and the plate bitten in acid. By this means the drawing alone is etched in an aquatint texture, for the rest of the plate, being protected by the varnish, remains unbitten. Finally both ground and varnish are cleaned off and the plate is printed, showing the design as a dark tone on a white background. Gainsborough learnt the technique from Sandby.

Aquatint has often been combined with etching, notably by Goya, most of whose prints use the two techniques together in varying proportions. With his great exception, aquatint was used mainly as a reproductive technique until late in the 19th century, when Cassatt, Degas, and Camille Pissarro made a number of highly original prints in which aquatint was combined with etching and other intaglio methods. In the 20th century the technique became much more popular with creative printmakers as part of the general revival of interest in the print as an independent art form—a revival in which S. W. Hayter played a central role. Masson, Picasso, and Rouault are among the major modern artists who have used it.