Spiraea aruncus (Tyrol)  1854

This botanical study is the first work by the British artist Anna Atkins and the earliest photograph by a woman to enter the Museum's collection. The cyanotype of several sprigs of a Tyrolean flowering shrub (Spiraea aruncus) is one of 160 plates removed in 1981 from a unique album, Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants, inscribed by the artist in 1854 as a gi...