Anna Atkins
Osmunda Regalis (Australia)

Public Domain

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Artist Anna Atkins (British, 1799–1871)British, 1799–1871

CultureBritish

Titles

Osmunda Regalis (Australia)

Date1853–1854

MediumCyanotype

DimensionsImage: 13 3/4 × 9 5/16 in. (34.9 × 23.7 cm)
Sheet: 13 3/4 × 9 5/16 in. (34.9 × 23.7 cm)
Mount: 18 7/8 × 14 3/4 in. (48 × 37.5 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Mrs. Clare A. Glassell

Object number94.189

Current Location

The Nancy and Rich Kinder Building

Gallery 208

On view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionAlthough this fern study is a continuation of the centuries-old tradition of botanical illustration in all media, it is most directly related to the earliest cameraless botanical studies by William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of paper photography and a friend of both Anna Atkins and her father, John George Children. Children was a fellow and secretary of the Royal Society, and keeper of the Department of Natural History and Modern Curiosities at the newly established British Museum, and Atkins was a serious—if amateur—botanist who spent more than a decade gathering ferns, algae, and flowering plants and recording their form with the cyanotype process. An 1842 invention of the scientist Sir John Herschel, this photographic process is commonly known as the blueprint process employed (until recently) by architects to duplicate their line drawings.
ProvenanceThe artist; Anne Dixon; [...]; [Sotheby's Belgravia, London, October 28, 1981]; [Robert Hershkowitz, England, United Kingdom]; [Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, 1986]; purchased by MFAH, 1994.
Exhibition History"The Artist’s Palette: Primary Colors on Paper," The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 5 March - 15 April 2013.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Inscribed on image, lower center: Osmunda Regalis.
Inscribed in pencil, verso, bottom left: 2052
Inscribed in pencil, verso, bottom center: ANNA ATKINS [later inscription]

The cyanotype is not signed.

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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