Tonbridge 1799-1871 Tonbridge,English botanist and pioneer of the photogram and photographic publishing. Daughter of the prominent scientist John George Children, Atkins was encouraged by him in her scientific interests. She was a competent watercolourist and published at least one lithograph. By 1823 her draughtsmanship and observational skills were refined enough for her to produce 200 illustrations for her father's translation of Lamarck's Genera of Shells. Botany was her particular love, especially the collection and study of seaweeds. Her father chaired the February 1839 Royal Society meeting at which Henry Talbot first revealed the manipulatory secrets of photogenic drawing. Father and daughter soon got a camera and took up the new art of photography, but Atkins's biggest contribution to it involved neither a camera nor her father. She conceived the idea of publishing a photographic record of her algae, making photograms by contact printing the dried specimens on sheets of sensitized paper.   Related Paintings of Anna Atkins :. | A View of Cape Stephens in Cook-s Straits New Zealand With Waterspout | Peasant Woman near the Hearth (mk06) | The Pattern at Glendalough, Co. Wicklow | Delphi Cappio | Female nude |
Related Artists:
TIEPOLO, Giovanni Domenico
Italian painter, Venetian school (b. 1727, Venezia, d. 1804, Venezia). Italian painter and printmaker. He was apprenticed to his father, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, in Venice in the early 1740s and worked with him in Madrid from 1762 until the elder's death in 1770. His most notable early works are the chinoiserie decorations of the Villa Valmarana in Vicenza (1757). Back in Venice, he executed several frescoes and paintings of scenes from the commedia dell'arte. A talented genre painter and caricaturist, he was famous for his many engravings and etchings after his own and his father's designs.
Bartholomeus van der Helst
1613-1670 Dutch Bartholomeus Van Der Helst Galleries Dutch painter. He was the son of a Haarlem inn-keeper and presumably undertook part or all of his training in Amsterdam. His earliest works suggest that the painter Nicolaes Eliasz. Pickenoy was his master. Although van der Helst had probably already established himself as an independent master by the time he married Anna du Pire in Amsterdam in 1636, his earliest known work, a portrait of The Regents of the Walloon Orphanage, Amsterdam (Amsterdam, Maison Descartes), dates from 1637. Stylistically it is close to the work of Pickenoy. His portrait of a Protestant Minister of 1638 (Rotterdam, Boymans-van Beuningen) reveals the influence of Rembrandt. The young artist must have risen rapidly to fame in Amsterdam, for as early as 1639 he received the prestigious commission for a large painting for the Kloveniersdoelen (Arquebusiers or Musketeers Hall): The Civic Guard Company of Capt. Roelof Bicker and Lt Jan Michielsz. Blaeuw (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), which formed part of the same series as Rembrandt Night Watch (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.). Van der Helst may not have completed this commission until 1642 or 1643. The ingenious arrangement of the figures in a broad composition shows the artist special talent for composing large groups. Pickenoy influence is less noticeable here than in the portrait of 1637; the self-assured poses of the individual figures were to become a characteristic feature of van der Helst work. The successful execution of this portrait established van der Helst reputation: from 1642, when he began to receive an increasing number of commissions for individual portraits, until 1670 he was the leading portrait painter of the ruling class in Amsterdam. From 1642 his technique in portrait painting gradually became more fluent and the rendering of costume materials more detailed. Some typical portraits of his earlier period are those of Andries Bicker (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), his wife Catharina Gansneb Tengnagel (Dresden, Gemeldegal. Alte Meister) and their son Gerard Bicker (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), all of 1642, and the Portrait of a Young Girl (1645; London, N.G.). In 1648 van der Helst painted a second civic guard portrait, The Celebration of the Peace of M?nster at the Crossbowmen Headquarters, Amsterdam (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), a superbly composed and well painted portrait that, until the late 19th century, was considered one of the masterpieces of the Golden Age but later lost popularity because of its smooth and modish execution. It can nevertheless still be regarded as one of the most important group portraits of the 17th century. Its technical perfection, characterized by a well-modelled rendering of the figures and a smooth handling of the brush, dominated the rest of van der Helst oeuvre.
Judith leyster
1609-60 Dutch painter. She painted genre scenes, portraits and still-lifes, and she may also have made small etchings; no drawings by her are known. She specialized in small intimate genre scenes, usually with women seated by candlelight, and single half-length figures set against a neutral background.