The Turner Museum spares no effort to create premium quality art works. Using acid-free watercolor paper  – such paper gives each piece the look and feel not only of the aquatint but also of Turner’s original watercolor design for the aquatint.  The pigment-based ink used is estimated to last a 100 years minimum without noticeable fading in contrast to other methods using, for example, water-based pigments. The resolution of 751 dots per inch results in crisp contrasts with rich intense colors and a ‘velvety’ surface.

Aquatint derives from the Latin words aqua=water and tinta= tint/color – it is a rare form of etching using nitric acid which produces the effect of a watercolor. No expense was spared, the best aquatint artist of the time J.C. Sadler was hired to work under Turner’s supervision. Aquatint was then a relatively new medium.   Turner usually so eager to experiment, unfortunately did not take a liking to this new method of producing beautiful multiple-originals. For all the work Turner put into creating a design, the time consuming details involved in superwising the production process and the too few impressions which could be made by the aquatint method seem to have convinced Turner aquatints were not worth his trouble. In fact Turner was involved in very few for the remaining forty or so years of his long life. Turner aquatints are therefore extremely rare, particularly aquatints like Beauport which is larger than the average-size Turner multiple original.

The word Giclee means “spatter” in French, referring to the spattering of ink in its production process. The relatively new Giclee process is used to create these Jubilee premiums.  The artist selected for this delicate and highly skilled work is Michael Shaw who is not only a practicing artist but also an experienced computer whiz specializing in renewing, on his studio-computer, the image of the original, in this instant, the Beauport aquatint and the Lord Mildmay’s Sea Piece mixed media plate  as it appeared some 200 years ago.  In the case of Mildmay’s mixed media it means a mixture of etching, engraving and mezzotint.