Anne Ophelia Todd Dowden was a renowned artist with a life-long love of nature Born in Denver in 1907, Anne Ophelia Todd’s family moved to Boulder in 1910. The Todd family, like many who were affiliated with the University of Colorado, lived in a bungalow in the University Hill neighborhood. Anne’s father was a pathologist on the faculty of the medical School when it was located in Boulder. Their neighbors and close
family friends were Dr. T. D. A. Cockerell, a notable zoologist who wrote extensively on bees, and his wife Willmatte, a science teacher and botanist, who propagated a red sunflower.
Young Anne was influenced by their work. As children, Anne and her sister explored the outdoors in Gregory Canyon and in the hills behind Chautauqua Park where she claimed to know every rock and bush. In an oral
history interview, she said, “I can’t imagine a more perfect place to grow up than Boulder.”When not running free in the outdoors, she learned to paint with watercolors, which would become her favorite medium. Drawings she made as a teenager of some of her father’s specimens were published in a textbook….