Anna Atkins, Dictyota dichotoma in the young state and in fruit, 1853 — the cyanotype leaf reproduced whole, the white seaweed silhouette on Prussian blue with her handwritten caption

Anna Atkins – Dictyota dichotoma, 1853 | Giclée Print

30 × 40 cm / 11.8 × 15.7 in — Original size, 1:1
CHF 49.00
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Anna Atkins, Dictyota dichotoma in the young state and in fruit, 1853 — the cyanotype leaf reproduced whole, the white seaweed silhouette on Prussian blue with her handwritten caption
  • Anna Atkins, Dictyota dichotoma in the young state and in fruit, 1853 — the cyanotype leaf reproduced whole, the white seaweed silhouette on Prussian blue with her handwritten caption
  • Anna Atkins's Dictyota dichotoma as a 50 × 70 cm giclée print, unframed, hung 25 cm above a 140 cm sideboard
  • Detail at actual print size: the branching fronds of Dictyota dichotoma and the paper grain of the 1853 cyanotype
  • The 30 × 40 cm giclée print of Anna Atkins's Dictyota dichotoma, unframed, shown flat with its white border
  • The enlarged 50 × 70 cm giclée print of Dictyota dichotoma, unframed, shown flat with its white border
  • Anna Atkins, Dictyota dichotoma in the young state and in fruit, 1853 — the cyanotype leaf reproduced whole, the white seaweed silhouette on Prussian blue with her handwritten caption
  • Anna Atkins's Dictyota dichotoma as a 50 × 70 cm giclée print, unframed, hung 25 cm above a 140 cm sideboard
  • Detail at actual print size: the branching fronds of Dictyota dichotoma and the paper grain of the 1853 cyanotype
  • The 30 × 40 cm giclée print of Anna Atkins's Dictyota dichotoma, unframed, shown flat with its white border
  • The enlarged 50 × 70 cm giclée print of Dictyota dichotoma, unframed, shown flat with its white border
Anna Atkins – Dictyota dichotoma, 1853 | Giclée Print

Anna Atkins – Dictyota dichotoma, 1853 | Giclée Print

CHF 49.00
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Anna Atkins made this image without a camera. She laid a piece of dried seaweed on paper coated with iron salts, put it in the sun, and rinsed it in water. What the plant covered stayed white. Everything else turned Prussian blue.

She did this several thousand times. Between 1843 and 1853 she produced Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions — the first book in history illustrated with photographs, published eight months before Talbot's Pencil of Nature. Perhaps twenty-five copies were ever assembled, each plate printed by hand, each caption written by hand.

She was a botanist, not an artist, and the intention was documentary: a visual key to species that line engraving rendered badly. The result is something else. A brown-branched alga on white paper is a specimen. The same alga as a white silhouette on deep blue is a drawing made by the plant itself.

What this is. A giclée reproduction of one of Atkins's cyanotypes, printed with pigment inks. It is not a cyanotype and is not sold as one — a real cyanotype is a unique object made in sunlight, and Atkins's are in museums.

Scale
Original leaf: approx. 27 × 21 cm / 10.6 × 8.3 in
30 × 40 cm / 11.8 × 15.7 in — Original size, 1:1
50 × 70 cm / 19.7 × 27.6 in — Enlarged, 2.03× original

The print
Giclée on 200 gsm FSC-certified fine art paper, twelve pigment inks. White border, optical centre. The paper tone of the original is kept, not corrected. Unframed. Shipped rolled in a tube.

Provenance
Anna Atkins (1799–1871), Dictyota dichotoma, in the young state; and in fruit, from Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, 1843–1853; cyanotype, leaf approx. 27 × 21 cm.

Where this comes from
The museum file, the measurements, and what we are allowed to sell: the record for this sheet.

Further reading
Why This Print Is Not Bigger

The record behind this sheet — which impression we chose and why, what we measured, what we are allowed to sell, and the framing dimensions for this sheet.

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