Walter Fitch, Llewllyn House, Kew. Presented by his widow in 1904. By kind permission of the Press Office, Kew Gardens.

The botanical illustrator Walter Hood Fitch (1817–1892) was born in Lanark, a town on the River Clyde just south-east of Glasgow. As the second child of John Fitch, a cloth merchant, and his wife Catherine Maria, a dressmaker and milliner, the boy seemed destined for a career in some branch of the fabric industry. At first, this was precisely the course on which he embarked, albeit in a rather individual way. Having displayed a flair for art, he left Leeds Grammar School after a year and went to study with the Scottish landscape painter Andrew Donaldson (1790–1846), then took classes in lithography. With this background, he was apprenticed to a pattern-drawer in one of Glasgow's calico mills, making designs for printing on fabric. But then, in 1832, the mill-owner introduced him to a friend, William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865). Hooker, at that time Regius Professor of Botany at Glasgow University, was also the editor of the popular and long-running Curtis's Botanical Magazine. A spell of after-hours working for Hooker in his herbarium proved life-changing for Fitch: Hooker was so impressed by the young man's talent that he bought him out of the apprenticeship at the half-way mark, setting him to work with his other students and then making him his full-time illustrator.

Hooker's expectations of Fitch were fulfilled: even his "early work revealed the artistic power of a genius" (Hemsley 277). With an artist's eye and a craftsman's skills, and an increasingly thorough knowledge of botany as a science, he was able to transfer his sensitive drawings accurately to the plates without any intermediary, and the end product was such that even rehydrated dried specimens seemed to flourish under his hands: "the plants come to life so vividly on the page, their leaves catch the light, their petals glow" (Endersby 125). At this point, much of his output at went unsigned, with the illustrator himself explaining later that "all the unsigned plates in the Botanical Magazine, Icones Plantarum, Kew Journal of Botany, etc., from 1834 onward" were his own work (Hemsley 277). As often noted — so significant was it — the first plate that he actually signed was a lithograph of Mimulus roseus, which appeared in the Botanical Magazine that year:

Mimulus roseus, in the Botanical Magazine Vol. VIII (1 October 1834): 3353. [Click on this and the following images to enlarge them, and for more information about them.]

Early in the next decade, when Hooker was appointed as the director of Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Fitch followed him to London. Despite not having an official position, he became the only artist for the organisation's various publications, directly in the pay of Hooker himself. He now produced some of his best illustrations. Working both for Hooker, and then for his son Joseph Dalton Hooker, who succeeded his father at Kew in 1865, Fitch was amazingly prolific. According to Jan Lewis, he made nearly 3000 drawings for the Botanical Magazine alone, "and a further 9000 for other publications, ranging from small, woodcut illustrations for George Bentham's Handbook of the British Flora (1862–5) to coloured lithographic folios of Victoria regia (now Victoria amazonica) (1851)." He also worked for J. D. Hooker on Illustrations of Himalayan Plants (1855). In 1857 he was made a fellow of the Linnaean Society.

Victoria Regia: or, Illustrations of the Royal Water-lily, in a series of figures chiefly made from specimens flowering at Syon and at Kew / by Walter Fitch; with descriptions by Sir W.J. Hooker. 1851. Presented to Queen Victoria by the author. RCIN 1122365. © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust, by kind permission.

Fitch's illustrations were not only strikingly beautiful. They were brilliant interpretations. Remarkably, Fitch acquired such a deep understanding of botany that he could dissect dried specimens to reveal the structure of plants that he had never seen growing. He could then present entirely lifelike illustrations epitomising the type, not just recording that particular example of it. The procedure could be incredibly complex:

in a great many cases, Fitch never saw the plants he drew. He worked from dried specimens and sketches that others had made in the field. Moreover, most of his finished images show plants that never grew at all — they are usually composite images, drawn from numerous different sketches and specimens, which Fitch combined using his unique mix of artistic and botanical expertise. His images depict the typical form of the plant, a form that might never be seen, since he shows us, not what the plant looked like, but what it ought to look like. [Endersby 125]

His technique as a lithographer also evolved, explains Lewis, so that he perfected the art of lithography itself — drawing directly on the stone with litho chalk/crayon, "making a continuous tone for shading in place of the engraver's hatched line and so controlling the quality of his image." No wonder his work was so widely praised. Lewis concludes that "his artistic skill and scientific accuracy enhanced the value of every botanical work he illustrated."

As a young man, Fitch seems to have been a personable and likeable character. From Lewis's account he emerges as tall, slim, easy-going, "somewhat bohemian," and friendly with the other well-known plant illustrator Marianne North, rather than a rival. He was also well-rounded, still finding time to paint landscapes, enjoying and playing music as well as pursuing a very deep and genuine interest in botany. All the same, he became restless: his relationship with Hooker soured. As so often, the problem was a financial one. Married to Hannah, née Toghill, since 1857, with a typically large Victorian brood of eight children to support, and now the leading botanical illustrator of the age, Fitch felt inadequately recompensed. He finally broke away in 1877.

However, such was his standing that he was much sought after, and continued to illustrate plants to much acclaim for another ten years. This was the period during which he illustrated Henry John Elwes's important Monograph of the Genus Lilium (1877–80). By then, in the judgement of some critics at least, his line had become "altogether too swift and too loose"; but he was bound to have his detractors, and these critics too agreed that "all things considered, Fitch remains the most outstanding botanical artist of his day in Europe" (Blunt and Stearn 265). He was granted a civil pension in 1880.

Fitch's title-page to Elwes's A Monograph of the Genus Lilium of 1877.

After a period of ill health, Fitch died in 1892, predeceasing his wife and children. His grave is in the Old Burial Ground on Richmond Hill, beside Grove Gardens Chapel, where his wife would be buried with him in 1929. His nephew, John Nugent Fitch (1840–1927), who had been trained by his uncle, and was already well known for his work in Curtis's Botanical Magazine and the long project of The Orchid Album (1872-1897), was left to carry the family name forward in botanical circles. But Fitch's own name can never be forgotten. As Lynn Parker says, it "is attached to almost every illustrated botanical or horticultural publication of significance published in Britain from the 1830s until the 1880s." And since, in happier days, Joseph Hooker named Fitchia nutans after him (see Carlquist and Grant 285), it is also used for a Polynesian genus of shrubs, Fitchia (Compositae).

Related Material

Blunt, Wilfrid, and William T. Stearn. The Art of Botanical Illustration. New revised and extended ed. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 2000.

Carlquist, Sherman, and Martin L. Grant. "Studies in Fitchia (Compositae): Novelties from the Society Islands; Anatomical Studies," from the journal Pacific Science (1963): 282-298. Internet Archive. Web. 25 November 2025.

Desmond, Ray. “Walter Hood Fitch 1817-1892: A Centenary Tribute.” The Kew Magazine 9, no. 1 (1992): 21–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45066956.

Elwes, Henry John. A monograph of the genus Lilium. Illustrated by W.H. Fitch. London: Taylor & Francis, 1877. Internet Archive". Web. 25 November 2025.

Endersby, Jim. Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010.

Fielding, Stephen. "Walter Hood Fitch – Botanic Illustrator & neighbour to the Grove Gardens Chapel." Habitats & Heritage. Web. 25 November 2025. https://habitatsandheritage.org.uk

Hemsley, W. Botting. “Walter Hood Fitch, Botanical Artist, 1817-1892.” Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) 1915, no. 6 (1915): 277–84. Jstor. Web. 25 November 2025. https://doi.org/10.2307/4104572.

Lewis, Jan. "Fitch, Walter Hood (1817–1892), botanical artist and lithographer." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Web. 25 November 2025.

"Mimulus Roseus." Curtis's Botanical Magazine. Vol. VIII (1 October 1834): 3353. Internet Archive. Web. 25 November 2025.

Parker, Lynn. "Walter Hood Fitch - an 'incomparable botanical artist.'" Kew. Web. 25 November 2025. https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/walter-hood-fitch-an-incomparable-botanical-artist

"W.B.H." (doubtless W. Botting Helmsley). "W.H. Fitch." The Gardener's Chronicle. 2 July 1887: 12. Google Books. Free ebook.


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Created 25 November 2025