Andrew Varick Stout Anthony was born on December 4, 1835 in New York City, New York, United States, the son of John and Eliza (Stout) Anthony.
He was named after his maternal uncle Andrew Varick Stout, and was of English stock on his father's side, and of Dutch on his mother's.
The latter was the daughter of Elsie Van Varick, of the family of Richard Varick, mayor of New York.
He had "a sketchy schooling, " but later became "singularly well informed on a vast variety of subjects. "
He studied art with T. S. Cummings and wood engraving under T. W. Strong.
Before he was twenty, "with some wild scheme, " wrote S. G. W. Benjamin, "of coining mahogany into dollars by exporting it from Mexico, " he sailed to Honduras and was shipwrecked. Then he succumbed for a time to the lure of California, but eventually returned to New York.
An early engraving on a small broadside--Hutchings' California Scenes: The Mammoth Tree (1854)--is signed "Anthony & Baker Sc. " In 1857 appeared The Indian Fairy Book of Cornelius Mathews, with designs by John McLenan, engraved by Anthony. He also engraved drawings by D. C. Hitchcock of scenes and incidents in Central America, and wrote articles on Honduras, "Scraps from an Artist's Note Book, " published in Harper's Magazine, 1856-1857.
In 1860, in charge of the engraving department of the New York Illustrated News, he went to England for that paper to "scoop" the Heenan-Sayers prize-fight. His large and hurried engraving of the event, after a drawing by Thomas Nast, was done in part on the Vanderbilt during his passage home, and appeared in the "Championship Number" (May), with a note on the engraver and his portrait.
The first important work in which he had a hand was Folk Songs (1860), edited by John W. Palmer. Then began the activity by which he became best known.
From 1866 to 1889 he superintended, with delicate taste, the production of fine editions for Ticknor & Fields; Fields, Osgood & Co. ; and James R. Osgood & Co. , in Boston. Both Linton and Koehler state that this work had much influence on the art of wood engraving. Among the editions he superintended were those of Whittier's Snow Bound (1866), in which most of the engravings, after Harry Fenn, were his own--"of his best, " writes Linton, "subjects and drawings well suited to his graver, --honest while refined"; and Longfellow's Building of the Ship (1870), engravings by Anthony and Linton; Longfellow's Skeleton in Armor (1877), illustrations by Mary A. Hallock, later Mrs. Foote. He wrote the text for W. T. Smedley's drawings of Life and Character (1899), and his unfinished paper on "An Art That Is Passing Away" forms part of the volume Wood Engraving: Three Essays by A. V. S. Anthony, Timothy Cole and Elbridge Kingsley, published by the Grolier Club in 1916.
From 1894 until his death he was connected with the literary department of Harper & Brothers.
He died at West Newton, Massachussets, in 1906, and was cremated at Mount Auburn Crematory, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Anthiny was a famous artist. He was one of the founding members of the American Water Color Society, and was known mostly as an engraver, doing illustrations for books. Among his best known works are the illustrations for Whittier's Snow Bound (1867), Ballads of New England (1870), and Mabel Martin (1876); Longfellow's Skeleton in Armor (1877), and Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter (1878).
On December 24, 1858 he married Mary Aurelia Walker. They had a daughter and a son, Ripley Osgood.
