European printmaking in the 18th century grew greatly in quantity, and generally had high levels of technical skill. But original artistic printmaking declined, with reproductive prints becoming the majority. Many printmakers mixed intaglio printing techniques on the same plates with great skill. The generally reduced level of artistic creativity in printmaking changed at the end of the century with the great print series of Goya, whose career stretched into the 1820s but is all covered here. Goya is usually taken as the end of the old master print era, to which the 18th century added relatively little.
In this century the Baroque survived until almost the middle of the century—depending on the area—followed by Rococo and Neoclassicism, a movement that lasted until the beginning of the 19th century. The Rococo developed approximately between 1730 and 1770, and involved the survival of the main artistic manifestations of the Baroque, with a more emphasized sense of decoration and ornamental taste, which were taken to a paroxysm of richness, sophistication and elegance. The progressive social rise of the bourgeoisie and scientific advances, as well as the cultural environment of the Enlightenment, led to the abandonment of religious themes in favor of new themes and more worldly attitudes, in which luxury and ostentation stood out as new factors of social prestige.
Neoclassicism, on the other hand, can be framed between approximately 1760 and 1830. During this period, and especially after the French Revolution, the rise of the bourgeoisie favored the resurgence of classical forms, more pure and austere, as opposed to the ornamental excesses of the Baroque and Rococo, identified with the aristocracy. This atmosphere of appreciation of the classical Greco-Roman legacy was influenced by the archaeological discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum, together with the dissemination of an ideology of perfection of classical forms by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who postulated that in ancient Greece there was perfect beauty, which generated a myth about the perfection of classical beauty that still conditions the perception of art today.
During this period, prints reached high levels of technical perfection, requiring more and more apprenticeship and professionalization, which meant that most of the works were by printmakers by trade and not by the artists themselves, who combined this technique with painting. Likewise, engravers limited themselves to transcribing artists' compositions and rarely made their own compositions, except in a few cases such as Jean-Michel Moreau and Philibert-Louis Debucourt. Nevertheless, some artists did produce their own engravings, especially etchings, such as Jean-Antoine Watteau, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Gabriel de Saint-Aubin.
At the end of the century, lithography appeared, a new type of printmaking with wax on limestone plates, invented by Alois Senefelder in 1796. It was used by painters such as Goya, Gainsborough and Géricault. Because of its ease of printing and low cost, lithography was widely used in the journalistic medium until the appearance of photomechanical techniques. On the other hand, the printing of large series of prints became popular, usually collected in books, usually on subjects such as landscapes and views (Marco Ricci, Canaletto), satires of manners (William Hogarth, Thomas Rowlandson) or whims and fantasies (Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista Piranesi).
France
Rococo emerged in France, where printmaking experienced a golden age in this century. New techniques were tried out at this time: in 1704, Jacob Christoph Le Blon experimented with color printing combined with half inks; Jean-Charles François combined soft varnish and roller in what he called "pencil style engraving", and tried a brush etching technique close to aquatint, a method perfected by Jean-Baptiste Le Prince. In the transition between the 17th and 18th centuries, the work of Claude Gillot stood out, the architect of the change of taste in illustration for an ornamental and ornate style, applied to books as well as ex-libris, labels, business cards, menus, invitations, etc. Two outstanding Rococo painters were also dedicated to printmaking, Jean-Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. The first was the initiator of the fête galante ("gallant party"), a genre characterized by the representation of court scenes set in bucolic landscapes, in which he produced works such as Figures of fashions and French and comic figures, helped by printmakers such as François Joullain, Louis Desplaces and Henri Simon Thomassin. Boucher, perhaps the best watercolorist of the first half of the 18th century in his country, devoted himself mainly to the reproduction of Watteau's work, with a series of 125 etchings using the pencil engraving method. Other interpreters of Watteau's work were Laurent Cars and Anne Claude de Caylus. The work of two of Gérard Audran's nephews, Jean Audran and Benoît Audran the Elder, of skillful precision and technical perfection, should also be mentioned in this period. Printmaking was sometimes practiced as a hobby by members of royalty, such as Queen Marie Leczinska of France(wife of Louis XV) —who engraved some of Nattier and Oudry's works which she later distributed to friends using her own printing press —Philippe II of Orleans—who illustrated in 1718 the novel Daphnis and Cloe—or the Duchess of Luynes. In the second half of the century, the work of Jean-Honoré Fragonard stood out, still in rococo style, author of court scenes in leafy landscapes. Pierre-Philippe Choffard was a renowned draughtsman and watercolorist, author of the Notice sur l'art de la gravure en France. In the last decades, the work of Jean-Michel Moreau, Charles-Nicolas Cochin, Augustin de Saint-Aubin and Charles-Clément Balvay was already close to Neoclassicism. During the French Revolution, the series of two hundred prints of Historical Pictures of the French Revolution (1791), by Jean Duplessis-Bertaux, is worth mentioning.
The next generation, between the 18th and 19th centuries, is that of the neoclassicists: Jacques-Louis David, considered the father of French Neoclassicism, a painter of historical paintings in a sober style, produced some etchings with a caricatured tone (English Government, 1793–1794; The Army of Jars, 1793–1794); Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, who sporadically practiced printmaking, in intaglio (Phrosine et Mélidor) or lithography (A Reading, The Unfortunate Family); Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson illustrated books by Virgil, Anacreontea, Racine and other writers, which were published by the Didot brothers, a task in which François Gérard was also involved; Pierre-Narcisse Guérin was commissioned by the French government to prepare a report on the new method of lithography, for which he produced several essays, such as The Sloth and the Vigilante.
Italy
In Italy, the Venetian school of etchers, whose specialty was the vedute, the views of Venice, stands out. Its two main representatives were Canaletto and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. The former produced luminous views of his city, generally with small groups of people and broad perspectives of Venetian palaces and canals. Tiepolo had a great creative fantasy, in images of bold composition in which the liveliness of the movements and a dazzling luminosity stand out (Capricci, Scherzi di fantasia). His sons and disciples Giovanni Domenico and Lorenzo Tiepolo followed in his footsteps. Also worth mentioning in Venice were Luca Carlevarijs, Michele Marieschi and Giovanni Marco Pitteri. In Rome, the work of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Venetian by origin, author of the famous series of prints of Roman views (Views of Rome, Magnificence of Roman architecture), as well as the great inventiveness of the Imaginary Prisons.
Giovanni Volpato, reproduced works by Raphael, Claude Lorrain and Anton Raphael Mengs. His disciple, Raffaello Sanzio Morghen was a great engraver of exquisite workmanship.
Germany
In Germany, Johann Elias Ridinger specialized in images of animals and hunting scenes; Bernhard Rode was a watercolorist influenced by Rubens and Rembrandt; Daniel Chodowiecki decorated books and almanacs with skillful compositional sense, such as Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and Goethe's Werther; Johann Georg Wille and Georg Friedrich Schmidt expatriated to France, where they excelled as portraitists; and Adam von Bartsch was the author of the Peintre-graveur, a catalog of the most famous prints by Flemish, Dutch, German and Italian masters.
Netherlands In the Netherlands, printmaking declined notably during this century, after the heights of great quality reached in the previous century. Jacobus Houbraken and Cornelis Ploos van Amstel deserve to be mentioned. The former worked mainly with the burin, and specialized in portraits, especially biographies of illustrious figures of his time. Ploos van Amstel was dedicated to the reproduction of works by Nicolaes Berchem, Adriaen van de Velde and Adriaen Brouwer.
Britain
In Great Britain, the Italian Francesco Bartolozzi introduced dot engraving (also called "crayon") and formed a school of engravers including John Keyse Sherwin, John Raphael Smith and Caroline Watson; he also worked occasionally with Angelica Kauffmann. Thomas Bewick introduced the new wood engraving technique by cutting the wood across the grain, and printing in intaglio; an ornithologist by profession, he produced bird prints of great quality (British Birds, 1797–1804).
William Woollett, a skilled engraver and aquaprinter, made reproductions of the works of Claude Lorrain and especially Richard Wilson. The Frenchman Simon François Ravenet was an outstanding portraitist. The painter Thomas Gainsborough etched a few landscapes with careful attention to detail. Another painter, William Hogarth, was one of the most outstanding printmakers of his time, though not making the plates himself. He produced genre scenes of satirical and moralistic tone, in series such as The Four Stages of Cruelty, The Four Times of the Day, Industry and Idleness and Fashionable Marriage. Thomas Rowlandson, author of the series Human Miseries, had the same satirical-moralizing tone, as did James Gillray, a famous caricaturist. It is also worth mentioning the editorial work of John Boydell, creator of the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, in charge of the production of prints of scenes from the plays of William Shakespeare. He also promoted the engraving of the series of drawings of the Liber Veritatis of Claude Lorrain by Richard Earlom.
Spain before Goya