The 30 × 40 cm giclée print of Anna Atkins's Zygnema curvatum, unframed, shown flat with its white border

Anna Atkins – Zygnema curvatum, 1853 | Giclée Print

30 × 40 cm / 11.8 × 15.7 in — Original size, 1:1
CHF 59.00
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The 30 × 40 cm giclée print of Anna Atkins's Zygnema curvatum, unframed, shown flat with its white border
  • The 30 × 40 cm giclée print of Anna Atkins's Zygnema curvatum, unframed, shown flat with its white border
  • Anna Atkins, Zygnema curvatum, 1853 — the cyanotype plate reproduced whole, a single luminous mass of freshwater alga on Prussian blue with the handwritten species name
  • Anna Atkins's Zygnema curvatum as a 50 × 70 cm giclée print, unframed, hung 25 cm above a 140 cm sideboard
  • Detail at actual print size: the fine threads at the edge of Zygnema curvatum and the paper grain of the 1853 cyanotype
  • The 30 × 40 cm giclée print of Anna Atkins's Zygnema curvatum, unframed, shown flat with its white border
  • Anna Atkins, Zygnema curvatum, 1853 — the cyanotype plate reproduced whole, a single luminous mass of freshwater alga on Prussian blue with the handwritten species name
  • Anna Atkins's Zygnema curvatum as a 50 × 70 cm giclée print, unframed, hung 25 cm above a 140 cm sideboard
  • Detail at actual print size: the fine threads at the edge of Zygnema curvatum and the paper grain of the 1853 cyanotype
Anna Atkins – Zygnema curvatum, 1853 | Giclée Print

Anna Atkins – Zygnema curvatum, 1853 | Giclée Print

CHF 59.00
Size

Zygnema curvatum is a freshwater alga of ponds and slow ditches — a mat of green threads so fine that a handful feels like wet silk. Dried and laid on the sensitised paper, it printed as one luminous mass, closer to a cloud than to a plant. It is the least plant-like picture in the whole album, and the most modern.

Anna Atkins made her images without a camera. She laid the dried plant on coated paper, exposed it to daylight and rinsed it in water. Between 1843 and 1853 she did this several thousand times and produced Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions — the first book in history illustrated with photographs. Perhaps twenty-five copies were ever assembled.

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: 25.3 × 20 cm / 10.0 × 7.9 in — Metropolitan Museum of Art
30 × 40 cm / 11.8 × 15.7 in — Original size, 1:1
50 × 70 cm / 19.7 × 27.6 in — Enlarged, 2.1× original

At original size the sheet carries the cyanotype exactly as Atkins made it. Enlarged, the mass fills a wall and the paper grain of 1853 becomes visible — which is a different picture, and a deliberate one.

The plate is reproduced whole, including Atkins's handwritten species name. Only the museum's mount around the sheet is trimmed away.

Provenance
Anna Atkins (1799–1871), Zygnema curvatum, from Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, 1843–1853; cyanotype, image 25.3 × 20 cm.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2005, Acc. No. 2005.100.557 (117).
The work is in the public domain worldwide; the Museum publishes its digitisation under Open Access (CC0).

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.

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