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XXIV.— WALTER HOOD FITCH, BOTANICAL ' 



ARTIST, 1817-1892. 



W. BoTTiNG Hems LEY. 



Appreciative obituary notices of this talented artist are 

 numerous,* and tlie liigh quality of tlie productions of his facile 

 pencil is universally recognised in the botanical world; but 

 few persons have any idea of the quantitj^ and variety of his 

 work, as no systematic and comprehensive record exists. An 

 attempt at such follows below, and if it is not absolutely com- 

 plete it is believed that no important contribution of his to the 

 illustration of the vegetable kingdom has been omitted. That 

 minor worTis exist to which we have no clue is possible, or even 

 probable, because many of these appeared anonymously, Fitch 

 was both artist and lithographer, so that his plates ex2)ress his 

 own conceptions and meanings. Much of his early work for Sir 

 William Hooker's publications is unsigned. On this jKunt 

 Pitch himself informed the writer that Sir "William invariably 

 signed his own drawings, that the signatures of correspondents 

 were ahvays appended to their contributions, and that he himself 

 was responsible for all the unsigned plates in the Botanical 

 Magazine, Icones Plantarum, Kew Journal of Botany, etc., 

 from 1834 onward. Sir William Hooker was himself an 

 accomplished botanical artist, but his style is quite different from 

 the bolder Fitchian style, his drawings being characterised by 

 their more delicate and detailed finish, Biographically it will 

 be sufficient to mention that our artist possessed a natural taste 

 for drawing' in early years, wliich soon developed into executive 

 ability, and brought him employment in the factory of a Glasgow 

 firm of calico printers, where Sir William Huoker "discovered him 

 and ransomed his indentures of a])})renticeship. Under so able 

 an instructor as Sir William, Eitch soon became proficient 

 and even his early work revealed the artistic power of a genius. 

 His career as a botanical artist commenced in October, 1834, 

 with plate 3353 {Mimulus roseus), of the Botanical Magazine. 

 It would be superfluous to enter into particulars of his pro- 

 gress to maturity, and his merits as an artist; his pencil always 

 reveals the master hand. Nevertheless a few words of apprecia- 

 tion from the pen of his early patron are appropriately 

 leproduced here. In his preface to Bauer's illustrations 

 of the ''Genera Filicum " Sir William Hooker says: 

 "Thev have all been executed under my own eye m zinco- 

 graphy by a young artist, W. Fitch, with a dejicacy^^and 



ace ^ • ■" ■ '• ■> ■ •■> n .._ „, 



i he J 



uracy Avhich I trust will not discredit the figures from which 

 -y were taken." This was in 1842. Sixty years Inter, Sir 

 Joseph Hooker, in the sketch of his father s life refers to 

 Fitch in terms of unstinted praise as one " who by his artistic 

 talents 'contributed so largely to the value of my father s work. 

 Fitch accompanied Sir William Hooker to Kew on his taking up 



* See Tlie Gardeners* Chronicle, Jan. 23, 1892: Journal of Botany, 1892, 

 with portrait. 



