Surface tone

Tone in printmaking meaning areas of continuous colour, as opposed to the linear marks made by an engraved or drawn line.

A note at the start of the most widely available book reproducing all Rembrandt's prints explains that, where possible, impressions without surface tone were selected for this reason.

It was one of a number of ways, notably including printing on different papers, and vellum, and using the burr from drypoint, that he used to vary the appearance of his etchings.

Reflecting the mid-19th century taste for a "rich overall tone", when his series The Disasters of War (1810–20) was given its first real edition in 1863 by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, they made the "disastrous" choice to make considerable use of surface tone, which is not seen in the few early impressions made by Goya himself.

Instead of the "luminosity and delicacy" of these, the later editions "provide a dulled and distorted reflection of the artist's intentions", according to Juliet Wilson Bareau.

[17] James Whistler was heavily influenced as a printmaker by Rembrandt, and in his "middle period" made great use of surface tone, before reducing it in his later work.