Aquatint
Topic: Peasant and Tribal Resistance under Company Rule · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Colonialism and the Countryside"
Meaning
An aquatint is a picture made by cutting into a copper plate with acid and then printing from it. The method can produce soft areas of shade, so the prints often look like watercolour paintings. In the late eighteenth century, British artists used aquatints to show Indian landscapes to people in Britain. These pictures are useful to historians, but they show India through British eyes.
Example
William Hodges toured the Rajmahal hills in 1782 with Augustus Cleveland, the Collector of Bhagalpur. He later published a set of aquatints of the region. They showed the hills as calm, beautiful scenes, even though officials thought the area was wild and dangerous.
Don't confuse with
- Picturesque: an artistic ideal, meaning a way of seeing landscapes. Aquatint is a printing technique. Hodges used the aquatint technique to make picturesque images.
Related concepts
- Paharia
- Rajmahal hills
- Shifting cultivation
- Augustus Cleveland
- Paharia pacification policy
- Stipendiary chief
- William Hodges
- Picturesque