Dandelion (Taraxacum Officinale); British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns
- Object:
- Place of origin:
Great Britain, United Kingdom (made)
- Date:
- Artist/Maker:
Atkins, Anna, born 1799 - died 1871 (maker)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Museum number:
- Gallery location:
Prints & Drawings Study Room, level F, case TOPIC, shelf DP, box 3
- Download image
Anna Atkins was the world’s first woman photographer. She was also the first person to print and publish a photographically illustrated book, British Algae (1843). She took up what she called ‘Sir John Herschel’s beautiful process of cyanotype’ as soon as it was invented in 1842. At that time she was already skilled at drawing shells and other natural specimens. Her motivation for taking up photography was surely aesthetic as well as scientific. This is probably the first photographic portrait of a dandelion. (It could even be called a self-portrait, in that the dandelion was placed on light sensitive paper and imprinted its own image under the rays of the sun, without the use of a camera.) It comes from Atkins’s finest album, which she presented to her friend and co-photographer Anne Dixon in 1854.
Physical description
Cyanotype print showing the outline of dandelion flower and leaves, pale blue on a dark blue background.
Place of Origin
Great Britain, United Kingdom (made)
Date
ca. 1854 (made)
Artist/maker
Atkins, Anna, born 1799 - died 1871 (maker)
Materials and Techniques
Cyanotype on paper
Dimensions
Height: 35 cm, Width: 24.3 cm
Object history note
Anna Atkins produced the first photographically illustrated book and is recognised as the first female photographer, with her three-volume British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions appearing in instalments from 1843. Atkins used the Cyanotype process which had been invented in 1842 by Fox Talbot’s associate Sir John Herschel.
Descriptive line
Dandelion (Taraxacum Officinale), cyanotype, by Anna Atkins, Britain, ca. 1854.
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Val Williams and Susan Bright, How we are: photographing Britain, from the 1840s to the present London: Tate Publishing, 2007. ISBN: 9781854377142.
Exhibition catalogue
Exhibition History
Photographing Britain 1840s to the Present (Tate 22/05/2007-02/09/2007)
Picturing Plants: masterpieces of botanical illustration (Henry Cole Wing, Level 3 01/10/1995-31/12/2004)
Labels and date
98 Anna Atkins (1799-1871)
Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)
'From Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns',
1854
Atkins was the first to use photographs for illustrated books. Each cyanotype is a handmade unique print, so none of the plates in Atkins' botanical publications are identical. Despite being an 'impression' of the plant itself, the value of a cyanotype print to the botanist is limited because it can give no indication of volume, texture or colour.
Subjects depicted
Flowers (plants); Leaf (plant material)
Categories
Photographs
Collection code
PDP
