Hedysarum (America)
Anna Atkins
Category
Photographs
Date
1850 - 1854
Materials
Paper
Measurements
348 mm (H)246 mm (W)
Order this imageCollection
Fox Talbot Museum, Wiltshire
NT 98244
Caption
Anna Atkins is recognised today as the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographs – an achievement made possible by her pioneering application of the cyanotype process. Atkins embedded scientific knowledge and artistic talent throughout her life and work, encouraged by her father, the chemist, mineralogist and natural scientist John George Children (1777–1852). Her contribution of 256 original drawings to illustrate his published translation of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s Genera of Shells (1822–4) serves as an early example. Atkins nurtured a growing passion for botany, assembling significant botanical collections and joining the Botanical Society of London in 1839. Exposure to the groundbreaking inventions of Sir John Herschel (1792–1871) and William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–77) of Lacock Abbey led to her own innovative pursuits in the field of photography. She was quick to adopt Herschel’s cyanotype process (announced in 1842) to make remarkable botanical photographs. Brushing writing paper with a solution of iron salts to make it light sensitive, Atkins would lay a specimen and handwritten label directly on top, place them securely under glass in the sun for several minutes and finally wash in water. Her absorbing, delicate and camera-less studies of nature were rendered in negative form – shades of white against the alluring Prussian blues that permeate the paper. Atkins gave the first part of her privately published book Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions to the Royal Society in 1843. Hundreds more prints followed in instalments over the following decade. She later made this Hedysarum genus print, thought to have belonged to the now dispersed album Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns (1854), which she created for her friend Anne Dixon.
Summary
A cyanotype photograph made by Anna Atkins with specimens from the Hedysarum genus, as identified by the handwritten title included in the process at the base of the print. Anna Atkins, a pioneer for the cyanotype process, likely made this print around 1854 as part of an album she made for her friend Anne Dixon titled Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns. This album is now dispersed.
Makers and roles
Anna Atkins
References
Conroy, Rachel, Women Artists and Designers at the National Trust, 2025, pp. 112-113