Ceramium rubrum
ca. 1853
Medium
Cyanotype
Dimensions
Image: 25.3 x 20 cm (9 15/16 x 7 7/8 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.557 (37)
Tags
Art Historical Context
**Ceramium rubrum** Anna Atkins, created around 1853, captures the fronds of this vibrant red seaweed in exquisite detail. Atkins, a British botanist and photographer, produced this image as part of her pioneering efforts to document marine algae through photography. Displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Photographs Department (Gilman Collection, 25.3 x 20 cm), it exemplifies the intersection of science and art in the Victorian era, when naturalists sought precise visual records of the natural world. The medium, cyanotype—a cameraless photogram process invented by Sir John Herschel in...
About the Artist
Anna Atkins
Anna Atkins (née Children), born on March 16, 1799, in Tonbridge, Kent, England, grew up immersed in the world of science thanks to her father, John George Children, a prominent chemist, zoologist, and curator at the British Museum. After her mother Hester's death shortly after childbirth in 1800, Anna formed a close bond with her father, receiving an exceptional scientific education rare for wome...