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 both lines and shaded tone. 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.
Thomas Bewick was an English wood-engraver and natural history author. Early in his career he took on all kinds of work such as engraving cutlery, making the wood blocks for advertisements, and illustrating children's books. He gradually turned to illustrating, writing and publishing his own books, gaining an adult audience for the fine illustrations in A History of Quadrupeds.
The sloth bear, also known as the Indian bear, is a myrmecophagous bear species native to the Indian subcontinent. It feeds on fruits, ants and termites. It is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, mainly because of habitat loss and degradation. It is the only species in the genus Melursus.
The Turkish Angora is a breed of domestic cat. Turkish Angoras are one of the ancient, natural breeds of cat, having originated in central Anatolia. The breed has been documented as early as the 17th century. Outside of the United States, the breed is usually referred to as simply the Angora or Ankara cat. These cats have slender and elegant bodies.
Wood engraving is a printmaking technique, in which an artist works an image into a block of wood. Functionally a variety of woodcut, it uses relief printing, where the artist applies ink to the face of the block and prints using relatively low pressure. By contrast, ordinary engraving, like etching, uses a metal plate for the matrix, and is printed by the intaglio method, where the ink fills the valleys, the removed areas. As a result, the blocks for wood engravings deteriorate less quickly than the copper plates of engravings, and have a distinctive white-on-black character.
Thomas Daniell was an English landscape painter who also painted Orientalist themes. He spent seven years in India, accompanied by his nephew William, also an artist, and published several series of aquatints of the country.
William Daniell (1769–1837) was an English landscape and marine painter, and printmaker, notable for his work in aquatint. He travelled extensively in India in the company of his uncle Thomas Daniell, with whom he collaborated on one of the finest illustrated works of the period – Oriental Scenery. He later travelled around the coastline of Britain to paint watercolours for the equally ambitious book A Voyage Round Great Britain. His work was exhibited at the Royal Academy and the British Institution and he became a Royal Academician in 1822.
The Havell family of Reading, Berkshire, England, included a number of notable engravers, etchers and painters, as well as writers, publishers, educators, and musicians. In particular, members of this family were among the foremost practitioners of aquatint; and had a long association with Indian art and culture. The family first came to notice through the brothers Luke Havell and Robert Havell the Elder ; along with their nephew Daniel Havell.
Thomas Malton, was an English painter of topographical and architectural views, and an engraver. J. M. W. Turner and Thomas Girtin were amongst his pupils. He is designated "the younger" to differentiate him from his father Thomas Malton, the Elder.
Jemima Wedderburn Blackburn was a Scottish painter whose work illustrated rural life in 19th-century Scotland. One of the most popular illustrators in Victorian Britain, she illustrated 27 books. Her greatest ornithological achievement was the second edition of her Birds from Nature (1868). Most of the illustrations were watercolours, with early paintings often including some ink work. A few were collages in which she cut out a bird's outline and transferred it to a different background, in a similar manner to John James Audubon. Her many watercolours showed daily family life in the late 19th-century Scottish Highlands as well as fantasy scenes from children's fables. She achieved widespread recognition under the initials JB or her married name Mrs. Hugh Blackburn.
Robert John Thornton (1768–1837) was an English physician and botanical writer, noted for A New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus Von Linnæus (1797–1807) and "The British Flora" of 1812.
Edmund Evans was an English wood-engraver and colour printer during the Victorian era. He specialized in full-colour printing, a technique which, in part because of his work, became popular in the mid-19th century. He employed and collaborated with illustrators such as Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway and Richard Doyle to produce what are now considered to be classic children's books. Little is known about his life, although he wrote a short autobiography before his death in 1905 in which he described his life as a printer in Victorian London.
Francis Jukes (1745–1812) was a prolific engraver and publisher, chiefly known for his topographical and shipping prints, the majority in aquatint. He worked alongside the great illustrators of the late eighteenth century. He contributed numerous plates to various publications of rural scenes. His early prints were published in collaboration with Valentine Green, and later worked in collaboration with the engraver and publisher Robert Pollard.
Charles Catton the younger was an English-born American topographical artist, illustrator, theatrical scene-painter, and slave-owner.
A History of British Birds is a natural history book by Thomas Bewick, published in two volumes. Volume 1, Land Birds, appeared in 1797. Volume 2, Water Birds, appeared in 1804. A supplement was published in 1821. The text in Land Birds was written by Ralph Beilby, while Bewick took over the text for the second volume. The book is admired mainly for the beauty and clarity of Bewick's wood-engravings, which are widely considered his finest work, and among the finest in that medium.
Peter Mazell was an Irish painter and engraver, working in London between c. 1761 and 1797. He is known for his fine engravings of natural history subjects, especially those illustrating books by John Walcott and the Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant. He created almost 600 engravings in his career. He also exhibited paintings of landscapes and flowers. He exhibited at the Society of Artists and at the Royal Academy.
The Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi is an encyclopaedic collection of 36 large (quarto) volumes written between 1749–1804, initially by the Comte de Buffon, and continued in eight more volumes after his death by his colleagues, led by Bernard Germain de Lacépède. The books cover what was known of the "natural sciences" at the time, including what would now be called material science, physics, chemistry and technology as well as the natural history of animals.
Johan Fredrik Martin was a Swedish painter and engraver of the eighteenth century. He worked in a variety of media, especially stipple, contour etching and aquatint.
The Tahitian Dog is an extinct breed of dog from Tahiti and the Society Islands. Similar to other strains of Polynesian dogs, it was introduced to the Society Islands and Tahiti by the ancestors of the Tahitian (Mā’ohi) people during their migrations to Polynesia.
Snowy Owl is an engraving by naturalist and painter John James Audubon. It was printed full size and is an early illustration of a snowy owl and part of The Birds of America. It was first published as part of a series in sections around 1831. This specific engraving of the snowy owl, like others in The Birds of America, consists of a hand-coloured engraving, made from copper engraved plates, measuring around 39 by 26 inches. The same book includes images of six now-extinct birds. Art historians describe the quality of Audubon's work as being high and printed with "artistic finesse".
