(b London, 1775; d ?London, ?1831–3). English painter and printmaker. At the age of nine he was taken to live in St Petersburg by his uncle, James Walker, who was an engraver in the service of Catherine II, Empress of Russia. Atkinson subsequently gained the patronage of the Empress and her son, Paul I (reg 1796–1801), executing a series of paintings on Russian history (e.g. Victory of the Cossacks of the Don over the Tartars) for them. He returned to England in 1801 and by 1808 was exhibiting as an Associate at the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, showing such literary and patriotic pictures as Shakespeare’s ‘Seven Ages’. A series of his soft-ground etchings, The Miseries of Human Life, by One of the Wretched (London, BM), was published in London in 1807. He also produced sets of engravings of military costumes, such as A Picturesque Representation of the Naval, Military and Miscellaneous Costumes of Great Britain (London, 1812) and painted numerous watercolours (e.g. HRH The Prince Regent, the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia Attended by Marshal Blücher at the Review in Hyde Park, 20 June 1814, c. 1814; London, N. Army Mus.). In 1815 Josiah Boydell (1752–1817) sent him to the site of the Battle of Waterloo to collaborate with Arthur William Devis on a painting of the event (watercolour study, London, BM). In 1819 the painting was engraved by John Burnet. Atkinson aspired towards recognition as a painter of historical subjects and competed unsuccessfully in a competition sponsored by the British Institution for a military painting to hang in the Royal Military Hospital in Chelsea, London.