How can a print replicate the subtlety of ink, wash, and watercolor? Driven by increasing interest in studying, collecting, and multiplying drawings, 18th-century printmakers and collectors answered this challenge by pursuing the possibilities of the aquatint. Within a few decades, this innovative, versatile medium would spread in use across Europe, its distinctive dark tones engendering the creation of a remarkable variety of ingenious imagery.

This book provides an engaging narrative about the medium’s flourishing as a cross-cultural and cosmopolitan phenomenon that contributed to the rise of art publishing, connoisseurship, leisure travel, and drawing instruction as well as the spread of neoclassicism. Thoughtful, focused examinations of key projects and themes offer insight into the sophisticated experiments of artists including Francisco de Goya, Katharina Prestel, Paul Sandby, and Jean-Baptiste Le Prince. Written by Rena Hoisington, curator and head of old master prints at the National Gallery of Art, and generously illustrated with rare works from the National Gallery’s collection of early aquatints, this book will appeal to an interdisciplinary audience interested in printmaking and how it was harnessed toward the exchange of information and ideas in Europe during the Enlightenment.