Walter H. Fitch (1817-92) Various publications between circa 1850-1870

Walter Hood Fitch, the most prolific of all botanical artists, was a typical product of the Victorian era, able and industrious;
like Sir William and Sir Joseph Hooker, whom he served successively for more than half a century.

Otto Stapf said this of Fitch's method:
"Fitch had a marvelous power of visualising plants as they lived and of retaining their image in his memory. This emboldened him rather to treat his originals as sketches than to work them into finished pictures, with the result that when finally drawn on stone they underwent a certain generalization in which the type of the species came to life and took the place of a photographically true portrait. His colouring was equally bold, which must have been a veritable boon to the colourists, who could get the desired effect with simple washes." ("The Art of Botanical Illustration" by Blunt and Stearn)