page_title: Aquatint
section_title: Revival
hierarchical_section_title: Aquatint / History / Revival
context_page_description: Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching that produces areas of tone rather than lines. For this reason it has mostly been used in conjunction with etching, to give outlines. It has also been used historically to print in colour, both by printing with multiple plates in different colours, and by making monochrome prints that were then hand-coloured with watercolour.
  It has been in regular use since the later 18th century, and was most widely used between about 1770 and 1830, when it was used both for artistic prints and decorative ones. After about 1830 it lost ground to lithography and other techniques. There have been periodic revivals among artists since then. An aquatint plate wears out relatively quickly, and is less easily reworked than other intaglio plates. Many of Goya's plates were reprinted too often posthumously, giving very poor impressions.
  Among the most famous prints using the aquatint technique are the major series by Goya, many of The Birds of America by John James Audubon, and prints by Mary Cassatt printed in colour using several plates.
context_section_description: After a period of several decades in the central 19th century when the technique was little used, and definitively superseded for commercial uses, it was revived near the end of the century in France, by Édouard Manet, Félicien Rops, Degas, Pissarro, Jacques Villon and other artists. In 1891, Mary Cassatt, based in Paris, exhibited a series of highly original coloured drypoint and aquatint prints, including Woman Bathing and The Coiffure, inspired by an exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints shown there the year before.  These used multiple blocks for the different colours.  Cassatt was attracted to the simplicity and clarity of Japanese design, and the skillful use of blocks of colour. In her interpretation, she used primarily light, delicate pastel colours and avoided black (a "forbidden" colour among the Impressionists).
  It continued to be used in the 20th century, with the Czech T. F. Šimon and the German Johnny Friedlaender notably frequent users.  In the United States the printmaker Pedro Joseph de Lemos popularized aquatints in art schools with his publications (1919–40), which simplified the cumbersome techniques, and with traveling exhibitions of his award-winning prints.
caption: Mary Cassatt, Woman Bathing, drypoint and aquatint, from three plates, 1890–91
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