J. Beavington Atkinson

Born in Higher Ardwick, Manchester, on 22 May 1822, Joseph Beavington Atkinson came from a Quaker family and was the eldest son of a silk and cotton manufacturer. Later known in print as J. Beavington Atkinson, he built a reputation as a writer and critic with a special interest in art.

Atkinson wrote on Russian and contemporary German art and contributed articles to periodicals including Blackwood's Magazine. His books include An Art Tour to the Northern Capitals of Europe (1873), The Schools of Modern Art in Germany (1880), and Overbeck (1882). He also contributed to collaborative volumes such as English Painters of the Present Day and Artists of the Present Day.

Archive and library records identify him as a writer and critic, and surviving references place his death in Kensington in 1886. A good deal of his work now survives in digitized form, where it still offers a sharp, readable window into nineteenth-century art and taste.