Atkinson was born at
Newcastle upon Tyne, England, on 28 November 1876. She was the daughter of the painter Matthew Hutton Atkinson and the granddaughter of the painters George Clayton Atkinson and William Adamson. 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. 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. Atkinson 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 British Columbia, specifically at the
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (From March 31, 1949 to April 2, 1949), 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. ==References==