George Mounsey Wheatley Atkinson, Marine Painter
(b. about 1806, d. 1884)
Marine Painter
From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913
Born in or about 1806 at Queenstown, County Cork, of English parents. He spent his early life at sea as a ship's carpenter, and was afterwards Government Surveyor of Shipping and Emigrants at Queenstown, where he was known as Captain Atkinson. As an artist he was self-taught, and his works, though possessing little merit as pictures, show a thorough knowledge of the sea. His first signed picture was painted in 1841, and he exhibited marine subjects in the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1842. His "Visit of the Queen and Prince Albert to Queenstown in 1849" was lithographed and published by W. Scraggs of Cork; and a volume of "Sketches in Norway, taken during a yachting cruise in the summer of 1852," was lithographed by his son, G. M. Atkinson, and published by Guy Brothers, Cork. Atkinson died at his residence, 3 Mervue Terrace, Queenstown, on 7th January, 1884, aged 78. He had three sons and one daughter: First, GEORGE MOUNSEY ATKINSON, for many years Art Examiner at South Kensington, who was in his early days an ardent student of Irish archaeology, contributing papers to the Journal of the Royal Society of Irish Antiquaries, and also editing R. R. Brash's "Ogham Inscribed Monuments of Gaedhil," published in London in 1879. He died at his residence in West Brompton, on 1st January, 1908. Second, RICHARD PETERSON ATKINSON, a landscape and marine painter who lived near Cork, and died in 1882, aged about 26. Third, ROBERT ATKINSON, marine painter, living in 1905. Fourth, SARAH (Mrs. Dobbs), married in 1885; art teacher, now resident in Dublin.