Sophie Atkinson

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Sophie Atkinson (born Sophia Mildred Atkinson), was an English watercolourist of the early and mid-twentieth century.

[edit] Biography

Atkinson was born at Newcastle upon Tyne, England, on 28 November 1876. She received training in art at the Newcastle School of Art, at Armstrong College, Newcastle, under R.G. Hatton and later at the Sir Hubert von Herkomer School near London.

At the turn of the century Atkinson lived in Corfu; the result was the book An Artist in Corfu, published in 1911, which she wrote and illustrated with her own watercolours.

After the Great War she travelled to India, and later also visited Denmark, Dresden and the Tyrol. After the death of the painter John Atkinson in 1924 she went to California and from there made her way to western Canada. Taking advantage of Canadian Pacific’s free passes to artists and writers, she travelled from British Columbia through Canada to Calgary, Ottawa and Montreal.

She settled in Revelstoke, British Columbia in 1949. She was an accomplished artist who painted still lifes, landscapes, and scenes of Indian villages, townscapes, and city scenes such as the Revelstoke railway yards. The Revelstoke Art Club was created by Atkinson in 1962. Her work received recognition at exhibitions in Montreal, Calgary and Revelstoke in Canada, and in London, England. She went back to Britain in about 1968, settling in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she died on 5 May 1972.