Aquatint is an etching technique that produces tonal areas using powdered resin and acid. From Goya's Caprichos to modern printmakers, learn how it works.
Francisco Goya's The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1799), plate 43 of Los Caprichos, shows the artist asleep at his desk while owls and bats swarm around him in the darkness. The darkness is not drawn with lines. It is a field of tone, a granular black that looks like ink wash or watercolor. But this is a print, not a painting. The tonal area was produced by a technique called aquatint, in which powdered resin is melted onto a copper plate and acid bites around the resin particles, creating thousands of tiny pits that hold ink. The result is a printable tone that ranges from pale gray to deep black, with no lines at all. Goya used aquatint to create the shadows, atmospheres, and darknesses that make his prints the most emotionally powerful intaglio prints ever made.
Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique that produces tonal areas rather than lines. A metal plate is dusted with finely powdered rosin or resin, which is then melted onto the plate surface with heat. The plate is submerged in acid, which bites around the resin particles, creating a microscopic network of tiny pits between the resin droplets. These pits hold ink, and when the plate is printed, they produce a veil of tone that can range from light gray to velvety black. The name comes from the Italian "acqua tinta," meaning tinted water, because the finished prints often resemble watercolor washes.
This entry covers how aquatint works, where it came from, which artists used it, and how to identify it in a museum. If you want to understand how printmakers create tonal areas without lines, aquatint is the answer.
The process begins with a clean copper or zinc plate. Powdered rosin, a solid form of resin obtained from pine trees, is deposited on the plate in a fine, even layer. There are two main methods for applying the rosin. In the dust cloud method, rosin powder is whipped up inside an enclosed cabinet, creating a "storm" of particles that settle gently and evenly over the plate. In the spirit ground method, rosin is dissolved in alcohol and painted onto the plate in washes that evaporate, leaving a residue of particles.
The plate is then heated until the rosin particles melt just enough to fuse to the metal surface. This is the most delicate step. Under-melting leaves the rosin powdery and weak, causing it to flake off in the acid bath. Over-melting causes the particles to liquefy, spread, and pool together, sealing the plate and preventing the acid from biting at all. The goal is for each particle to adhere to the plate while remaining as a discrete dot, leaving exposed metal between the particles.
The plate is submerged in acid, typically ferric chloride or dilute nitric acid. The acid bites into the exposed metal between the rosin particles, creating thousands of microscopic pits. The longer the plate stays in the acid, the deeper the pits, and the darker the resulting tone. By using stop-out varnish to protect areas of the plate and returning the plate to the acid for additional biting, the artist can create multiple tonal levels within a single plate. A 2025 guide from Jackson's Art describes the process: "Graduations within the halftone are achieved by controlling the amount of etching the plate is given with the deeper tones created by a longer etch." Read the full guide at Jackson's Art.
The spit-bite technique is an advanced variant in which the artist paints thickened acid directly onto the aquatinted plate, creating soft, graduated tones that resemble watercolor washes. The name comes from the traditional practice of thickening the acid with saliva. By varying the acid concentration and exposure time, the artist can create expressive, gestural marks that turn the etching process itself into a painterly act.
The earliest experiments with aquatint date to the mid-17th century. Jan van de Velde IV, working in Amsterdam around 1650, produced prints with tonal areas that appear to use a technique similar to aquatint, though he never documented his methods. The technique was then largely forgotten for a century.
Aquatint was formally developed in the 18th century as a method for reproducing watercolor and wash drawings. Stapart published a recipe in Art de graver au pinceau in 1773. Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, a French printmaker, popularized the technique with his 1780 publication Decouverte du procede de graver au lavis. Le Prince had traveled to Russia and used aquatint to reproduce his drawings of Russian scenes, which had the quality of wash drawings. In England, Paul Sandby refined Le Prince's dry powder technique by suspending the resin grains in "spirits of wine" that could be brushed onto the plate. Sandby coined the term "aquatint" to describe the medium's capacity to create the effects of ink and color washes.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes aquatint as "a means of etching tonal values" that "was named for the effects it creates, which look rather like ink or watercolor washes." The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline essay notes that the technique was used for popular prints including caricatures and fashion plates, and that its "lively pictorial effects suited it perfectly to the growing market for popular prints." Read the full essay at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In the early 19th century, lithography overtook etching and aquatint as a more economical form of color printing. But Goya's use of aquatint in the late 18th century ensured that the technique would be remembered not as a reproductive tool but as a medium of artistic expression.
Goya is the artist who made aquatint a medium of genius. His four major print series, Los Caprichos (1799), Los Desastres de la Guerra (1810-1820), La Tauromaquia (1816), and Los Disparates (c. 1816-1823), all use aquatint extensively. Goya combined etched lines with aquatint tones, using the lines for structure and the aquatint for atmosphere, shadow, and emotional depth. In Los Caprichos, plate 43, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, the aquatint creates a granular, nightmarish darkness around the sleeping figure. In Los Desastres de la Guerra, aquatint renders the blackness of night, the smoke of battle, and the shadows of execution. In 2024, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid exhibited all 213 of Goya's surviving copper plates together for the first time. The plates had been restored by removing 19th-century steel facing to reveal the original copper surfaces, showing Goya's hand in the etched lines, aquatint grain, and burin touches. Read the full story at El Pais.
Le Prince was the first artist to systematically develop and publish the aquatint technique. His Decouverte du procede de graver au lavis (1780) described the process and established aquatint as a viable printmaking method. Le Prince used aquatint to reproduce his drawings of Russian costumes and scenes, which had the quality of wash drawings that could not be reproduced with line-based etching or engraving.
Sandby refined Le Prince's technique in England by suspending resin in spirits of wine, creating a spirit ground that could be brushed onto the plate. He coined the term "aquatint" and used the technique to reproduce the tonal complexities of watercolor paintings, particularly landscapes with dramatic contrasts of dark and light.
Cassatt used aquatint in combination with drypoint and soft-ground etching to produce her celebrated series of prints depicting mothers and children. Her The Bath (1890-1891) combines aquatint for soft tonal areas with drypoint for linear details, creating a print that has the intimacy and softness of a pastel drawing.
Picasso used aquatint extensively, particularly in his Vollard Suite (1930-1937), a series of 100 etchings commissioned by the dealer Ambroise Vollard. Picasso combined aquatint with etching and drypoint to create rich tonal passages in these prints, which are now in the collection of the British Museum and other major institutions.
The signature of aquatint is the tonal area. If a print has areas of even tone, ranging from pale gray to deep black, with no visible lines, it is likely an aquatint. Look closely at the tonal area. Under magnification, you will see that it is made up of thousands of tiny dots, the pattern of the resin particles that were melted onto the plate. This granular texture distinguishes aquatint from the smooth tones of mezzotint or the wash-like tones of monotype.
Aquatint is often combined with etching. In a combined print, the etched lines provide the linear structure, and the aquatint provides the tonal areas. Goya's prints are the best examples. The etched lines define the figures and architecture. The aquatint creates the darkness, atmosphere, and emotional weight. The two techniques work together, each doing what the other cannot.
Like all intaglio prints, aquatints have a platemark on the paper. The tonal areas will have a slight texture visible to the naked eye, a granular quality that is different from the smooth surface of a lithograph or the flat color of a screen print.
Aquatint is a variant of etching and belongs to the intaglio family. It is often combined with etching, drypoint, and engraving on a single plate. Mezzotint is the other major tonal intaglio technique, but it works by roughening the entire plate and smoothing areas for light, rather than by biting around resin particles. Aquatint produces a granular tone. Mezzotint produces a smooth, continuous tone.
For more on printmaking techniques, read our entries on etching and intaglio, or explore our post on how to read a painting to learn more about identifying printmaking techniques in museums.
The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid holds Goya's original copper plates, now restored to their original copper state, alongside prints pulled from them. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has a complete first edition set of Los Caprichos. The National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo exhibited the complete Los Desastres de la Guerra series in 2024, including all 82 prints. The British Museum in London holds Picasso's Vollard Suite, which uses aquatint extensively.
If you want to see aquatint at its most powerful, look for Goya's Los Caprichos at the Met or the Los Desastres de la Guerra at the Prado or the San Fernando Academy. The combination of etched lines and aquatint tone creates effects that no other printmaking technique can match. For more on the broader context of printmaking, read our entries on etching and mezzotint, or explore our guide to chiaroscuro and dramatic contrast to see how aquatint creates tonal effects akin to painting.
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