George Atkinson

Early life and education George Atkinson was born in 1880 in Queenstown (now Cobh), the son of Thomas W. R. Atkinson, a Protestant timber mill owner and merchant. He decided to pursue art after he was inspired by the painter James Barry, also from Cork. He attended the Crawford School of Art in Cork from 1897, and worked in Dublin in from 1902. He remained there until 1910 before returning to Ireland. His artistic education focused on etching, mezzotint, and typography. He was one of the main organisers of an exhibition at the Galerie Barbazanges in association with the 1922 World Congress of the Irish Race in Paris. The monument was unveiled in August 1923 and stood on Leinster Lawn in Dublin until 1939. Atkinson furnished the Celtic inscriptions on the presentation scroll for Mia Cranwill's Senate Casket, commissioned by senator Alice Stopford Green to hold to a scroll signed by the first members of the Free State Seanad.

Atkinson created a series of three etchings as part of a government commission to document the construction of the Free State's ambitious Shannon hydroelectric scheme, beginning in 1925. In this period he also continued his work to promote Irish arts culture, becoming the treasurer and organiser of the arts section of the Tailteann Games in 1924, 1928 and 1932, later becoming a trustee and chair of the finance committee.

As of 1926 he sat on the art advisory committee of the Dublin Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, and was credited as an accomplished etcher and painter, responsible for reviving the mezzotint technique in Ireland after it had fallen out of use for 100 years. In 1926 he also created the memorial to Thomas William Lyster, a bronze plaque with silver inscriptions in the National Library of Ireland, on behalf of W. B. Yeats and the Friends of the National Library.

In 1931, Atkinson designed a postage stamp to mark the 200th anniversary of the Royal Dublin Society. He was also responsible for the design of the 1939 postage stamp celebrating the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution and the installation of its first President. As of 1939 he had become the secretary of the RHA and was active in its ongoing struggle to rebuild after the organisation's main building and collection of artworks had been destroyed by fire in the Easter Rising.

As part of the Gibson Bequest committee, Atkinson worked over the 1920s and 1930s to expand the collection of artworks at the Cork School of Art (now at Crawford Art Gallery). In 1936, Atkinson was appointed Director of the Metropolitan School of Art, retaining this position when it became the National College of Art. He held this position until his death in 1941.

Personal life and death Atkinson married in 1916 and the couple had two children. He had a long-running feud with colleague Seán Keating. He is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery in Dublin.