Details

Name

Anna Atkins

Brief Biography

1799 - 1871, English

Occupation

Botanist; Photographer

Description

Anna Atkins was a botanist and one of the earliest women photographers. In fact she is considered to be the first person to produce a book illustrated with photographic images, and some propose that she was the first woman to create a photograph
Anna Atkins was born in Kent in 1799, the daughter of Hester Anne and her father John George Children, Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum. Her mother died not long after childbirth and Anna became very close to her father, which resulted in her receiving a scientific education, an unusual occurrence for a woman at this time. She had a strong interest in botany and was a member of the London Botanical Society and assisted her father in his scientific work, including illustrating his publications.
She married John Pelly Atkins in 1825 and moved to Halstead Place near Sevenoaks in Kent. It was here that she developed her pioneering scientific work. Her husband’s father was a Lord Mayor of London and a local MP, and is described as a ‘West India merchant’ owning several plantations in Jamaica and Bermuda, where he was a ‘significant slave-owner’. The family wealth and some plantations were inherited by Anna’s husband. This wealth allowed her to work independently and devote her time to developing her scientific and photographic research interests.
Her family knew William Henry Fox Talbot, an inventor and pioneer of photography, and she learnt directly from him the process known as ‘photogenic drawing’, where an object is place on photo-sensitive paper and exposed to sunlight in order to produce an image. In 1842 the famous astronomer Sir John Herschel, another family friend, invented the cyanotype process, by which the unexposed impression of the object developed on paper with a deep blue coloured background. This became the basis of the ‘blueprint’ used by engineers to make copies of plans and designs.
Anna Atkins was interested in these innovations and applied them to her botanical studies producing imprints of her botanical specimens. In 1843 she privately published the first album of British seaweed entitled 'British Algae - Cyanotype Impressions'. The detailed silhouette of each specimen is so precise that the seaweed could often be identified to species level, which was a great value to other research scientists. Other botanists of the time, such as the famous algologist William Harvey, produced books without illustrations or with hand engraved drawings. One of the motivations of Anna Atkins’ work was to provide illustrations to Harvey’s ‘Manual of British Algae’ recently published in 1841. She privately published further volumes between 1843 and 1853.
In later life Anna Atkins continued to produce cyanotypes, in collaboration with a close friend Anne Dixon, with works on flowering plants and ferns, some showing a more artistic flair. Her work has inspired many subsequent designers and artists, and her works appear in popular merchandise. She also published five fictional novels. She died at the family home in Halstead Place in 1871 at the age of 72.
Cyanotypes are less perishable than other photographic techniques used at the time and this has allowed much of Anna Atkins' work to survive in good condition. However, Anna Atkins never gained much accreditation for her work during her lifetime, and it is only over the last 40 years or so that her pioneering work has become recognised and celebrated, inspiring many scientists, artists and designers.
The copy of 'British Algae – Cyanotype Impressions' held by Glasgow Museums is one of only around seventeen known to exist and it is considered to be the most complete. It is thought to have come to museum through collection of Adam White, who was a curator at the British Museum between 1835 and 1862. The book is so rare and of such historical importance that a complete set commands more