Paul Sandby
Landscapes in Aquatint

Paul Sandby (1731, Nottingham - 1809, London) is renowned for his landscape works, and for being one of the founding members of the Royal Academy. Sandby first began etching when working as a draughtsman for Ordnance Survey in Scotland, from 1747-1752. In 1752, Sandby moved to London, and began working as a professional artist. He produced many landscape works, both of the United Kingdom and beyond, working across a variety of mediums such as etching, gouache, and watercolour.

In addition, Sandby is acclaimed for his pioneering use of aquatint, a medium in which he produced over a hundred works. While the technique was developed in the 1760s in France, Sandby established his own technique of producing aquatints, and initiated the use of aquatint as a means of simulating watercolour and ink wash in print form. It was also Sandby who named the technique as such, calling it ‘aquatinta’. An intaglio printmaking technique, aquatint facilitates the creation of shading through tonal variation in a print. In order to produce his aquatints, Sandby used powdered rosin dissolved in spirit, which he then painted onto a metal plate. As an acid-resistant material, Sandby was able to produce variation in tone through varying the size of the rosin grain painted onto the plate. Indeed, looking at Sandby’s works closely, it is possible to see the grain produced by the rosin. Through using varnish to prevent the rosin from touching the plate in areas, Sandby was also able to produce areas of pure white in his prints, often seen for instance in the clouds in the skies of his landscapes. Sandby did not use aquatint in isolation, instead pairing the medium with etching on the same plate, which allowed for both tonal variation and delineation in his works. Sandby used the technique to depict a large variety of landscapes, from Wales, to Windsor and Eton, and to ruins at Troas.

The prints in this exhibition are almost exclusively all proofs, first or early states. 

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