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 CHAPTER XIII

AQUATINT AND COLOUR PRINTS

The technique of aquatint—Its introduction into England—Paul Sandby executes the first English aquatint in 1774—Its possibilities—Eighteenth-century colour prints—Stipple engravings, mezzotints, and aquatints printed in colour—Nineteenth-century colour printing in lithography—Baxter colour prints—Wood engravings in colour—The folly of fashionable collectors.

The Technique of Aquatint.—Aquatint comes in the history of the evolution of engraving as a link between mezzotint and lithography. It supplanted stipple in the representation of figure, and was especially adapted for series of views of topographical and architectural subjects, and was a ready means of producing coloured caricatures. As many as a couple of thousand impressions have been taken from one plate. In England aquatint has been devoted mainly to landscape, but in France many splendid portraits were done in this manner. The technique of aquatint is not an easy one to acquire. As in