Artist: Anna Atkins (1799 - 1871)
Nationality: English
Movement:
Media: Photography
Influences:

Biography:
Anna Atkins’s interest in photography developed from her original career as a botanist. She learned the trade from correspondence with inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot and although she owned a camera, her preferred technique was photogenic drawing. She used the medium to record specimens and contributed the images to the reference book, British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. One of the first books to use cyanotypes as illustration, the book was published in 1843 and created a reputation for the medium as accurate and appropriate for scientific publications. Atkins learned the cyanotype method of photogenic drawing from Sir John Herschel, a scientist and family friend, and continued to apply the technique to create many albums of botanical specimens.

Artworks in Museum Collections: (40)
Click the artwork titles below to see actual examples of artwork or works of art relevant to works by Anna Atkins.

Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Anna Atkins, Aspidium Achrosticoides (America), circa 1850
-
Anna Atkins - Myrrhis Odorata c. 1854 cyanotype Cincinnati Art Museum British
Museum of Fine Arts -
Anna Atkins, English, 1799-1871 Thistle (Carduus acanthoides) 1851-54 Photograph, cyanotype Image: 34.9 x 24.8 cm
-
Henry Dexter - Samuel Atkins Eliot 1837 plaster bust Boston Athenaeum American
J. Paul Getty Museum -
Equisetum sylvaticum
-
Lucius Barnes - Mrs. Martha Atkins Barnes 1834 watercolor and ink o Florence Griswold Museum American
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
J. C. Moore, Mr. Atkins and Miss Cross as Grumio and Curtis in The Taming Of The Shrew., 19th century
Museum of Fine Arts -
Elihu Vedder, American, 1836-1923 Lazarus Rising from the Tomb 1899 Oil on canvas 52.07 x
-
Frans van Doornik - Anna de Peyster 1731 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art Flemish
-
Amedeo Modigliani - Anna Zborowska 1917 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art Italian
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, The Artist"s Father, 1912
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington, Greyhounds, 1936
-
John Singleton Copley - Mrs. Anna Dummer Powell 1764 oil on canvas Cleveland Museum of Art American
-
Charles Peale Polk - Anna Maria Cumpston c. 1790 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art American
-
Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen - Anna Maria van Schurman 1657 oil on panel National Gallery of Art Dutch
-
Joshua Reynolds - Miss Anna Ward with Her Dog 1787 oil on canvas Kimbell Art Museum English
-
Thomas Sully - Mrs. Klapp (Anna Milnor) 1814 Oil on canvas The Art Institute of Chicago American
-
Robert Rauschenberg - Tracer 1963 oil and silkscreen o The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art American
-
Andy Warhol - Baseball 1962 oil and silkscreen o The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art American
-
Marsden Hartley - Himmel 1915 oil on canvas The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art American
-
Jacques Villon - The Red Umbrella 1901 etching and color aq The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art French
-
Willem de Kooning - Woman IV 1952-53 oil, enamel and char The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art American
-
Frederick Childe Hassam - The Sonata 1893 oil on canvas The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art American
-
Alberto Giacometti - The Chariot 1950 painted bronze The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Swiss
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Ipolito Salazar, Anna, 19th century
-
Lucas Cranach - Portrait of Anna Buchner, nee Lindacker c. 1520 oil on panel Minneapolis Institute of Arts German
-
Thomas Gainsborough - Lady Anna Horatia Waldegrave c. 1783 oil on canvas The Detroit Institute of Art English
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Anna Lee Merritt, Ophelia, 19th century
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Ventura Salimbeni, Joachim and Anna, 1590
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, Among the Lilies, 1909
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Bertha Lum, Yuki-Anna, the Frost Fairy, 1918
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, Rodin on his Death bed, 1917
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Anna Ticho, Old Jerusalem, 19th - 20th century
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Anna Ticho, Rooftops, 19th - 20th century
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Wenceslas Hollar, Anna Maria of Austria, 1652
-
George Caleb Bingham - Canvassing for a Vote 1852 oil on canvas The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art American
-
Hendrick Goltzius - Nox, Goddess of Night c. 1588-90 chiaroscuro woodcut The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Dutch
-
John Singer Sargent - Mrs. Cecil Wade 1886 oil on canvas The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art American
-
Paul Gauguin - Faaturuma (Melancholic) 1891 oil on canvas The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art French
-
Hermon Atkins MacNeil - The Moqui Runner 1897 bronze The Art Institute of Chicago American

Artnews Articles and Exhibition Information: (13)
Click on any of the links below to read about artnews or exhibitions related to Atkins

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Marsden Hartley: American Painter
Visitors to Marsden Hartley (1877-1943): American Painter, on view Oct. 11 through Jan. 4 at The Nelson- Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., will be able to bear witness to one of the most renowned American artists of the 20th century. ...
Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University: From Caligula to Constantine: Tyranny and Transformation in Roman Portraiture
The exhibition will be complemented by a variety of scholarly and educational programs. A catalogue accompanying the exhibition will consist of detailed entries on the individual objects featured in the exhibition, as well as sig...
Harvey Milk Institute: Call for Artists: Queer Photography Competitino
Artists are invited to explore this theme in a broad sense. Accomplished photographers from around the world are invited to submit slides of representative work. All photography-based works are welcome, with no limitations on technique. The 20...
Los Angeles County Museum of Art: Winslow Homer and the Critics: Forging a National Art in th 1870s
One of the most visible artists in New York City, Homer exhibited frequently at national and international venues including the National Academy of Design and the American Society of Painters in Water Color, and at prestigious private cl...
San Diego Art Institute: 45th Annual International All Media Visual Awards Exhibition
Over $5,000 will be awarded to the artist in this international show, including a Grand Award of $2,000, two Awards for Excellence of $1,000 and the John McKee Memorial Award for Figure Drawing / Painting. Returning to the show is Catherine ...
National Gallery of Art: THE GOLDEN AGE OF CHINESE ARCHAEOLOGY: CELEBRATED DISCOVERIES FROM THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
The exhibition is sponsored by Eastman Kodak Company. After its showing at the National Gallery, the exhibition will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1...
Mountclair Art Museum: Paris 1900: The American School at the Universal Exposition
Works of art exhibited in Paris have been lent by museums across the United States and Europe, including Whistler's Symphony in White No. 2 from the Tate Gallery ...
Alexandria Lyceum: Horace Day: An Artist in Alexandria, 1967 - 1984
Day’s paintings of upper King Street, painted at first hand, reflect a sense of the grace and elegance of a neighborhood still in decline. “King Street was throbbing with vitality: neon signs flashed over crudely painted store fron...
J. Paul Getty Center: Photographers of Genius at the Getty
From Hippolyte Bayard to Diane Arbus, the influential pioneers presented here span more than a century of photography, from the earliest years of the new art form in the late 1830s to the late 1960s. Each photographer featured in the exhibition ad...
Estate Project for Artists with AIDS: First-time Ever Exhibition from Innovative Databank
A national exhibition program has been launched, with the first venue being Parsons School of Design, a division of the New School University, of an upcoming exhibition drawn from The Virtual Collection. The Estate Project’s Director, Patrick M...
Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Responsive Eye: Ralph T. Coe and the Collecting of American Indian Art
The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All works in the exhibition are courtesy of Ralph T. Coe. Born in 1929, Coe was raised in Cleveland, Ohio. After graduate work in art history at Yale University, where his s...
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art: Marsden Hartley: First Retrospective in over 20 Years
Widely acknowledged as the greatest of the early American modernists, Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) belonged to a circle of artists promoted by photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz that included Georgia O’Keeffe, John Marin, Arthur Dove, ...
Gerald Peters Gallery: Cast and Carved: American Sculpture 1850-1950
Over 60 artists will be featured in the exhibition including Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Frederic Remington, Paul Manship and Isamu Noguchi. Works on view range in size from tabletop to monumental, and are composed of a variety of materials, includin...

Further Artwork and Information:

Anna Atkins (Getty Museum)
BBC - History - Anna Atkins (1799 - 1871)
Anna Atkins (1799 - 1871) Biography, Artwork Images, Exhibitions, Reviews
Anna Atkins
The Pencil of Nature - Anna Atkins
ANNA ATKINS
V&A Exploring Photography - Anna Atkins
Visual Arts Resources: Anna Atkins
artnet.com: Resource Library: Atkins, Anna
A History of Photography, by Robert Leggat: Anna ATKINS

Search the Art History Database for artists, titles, media, year, and other indepth information: