James Anderson

James Anderson was born Isaac Atkinson in Blencarn, Cumberland, England and studied painting in Paris as William Nugent Dunbar. In 1838 he moved to Rome and began to produce sculpture as James Anderson, which remained his professional name. Eleven years later he took up photography, opening a studio in Rome in 1853.

Anderson specialized in reproductions of works of art, publishing frequent catalogues of his work, but he also photographed views of Italy and antiquities. A contemporary called his photographs "...the best we have seen...extremely faithful and good, and of different sizes to suit all purses and purchasers...Mr. Anderson is the most extensive producer of photographs in Rome." Anderson exhibited his work widely throughout the 1860s. His son Domenico took over the studio after his father's death, and family members continued to run it until the 1940s. In 1960 the Fratelli Alinari firm acquired forty thousand of Anderson's glass plate negatives. Source https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/person/103KHC Accessed 3/28/2022 A. Chaparro