Walter Hood Fitch (1817-1892)

Many botanical illustrators have worked at Kew, but none so prolific as Walter Fitch. Born in Glasgow and apprenticed to a firm of calico printers, Fitch spent his spare time mounting dried plant specimens for the then Professor of Botany at Glasgow University, William Hooker. Realising his acumen for watercolour and line, Hooker persuaded Fitch to join him at Kew, as in March 1841 Sir William was appointed Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens. Fitch took residence in Hooker’s new home West Park, where Sir William relied heavily upon his assistance and company. As Sir Joseph Banks had employed artist Franz Bauer before him, so too did Sir William pay Fitch’s wages directly from his purse, settling for £100 a year, a third of Bauer’s annual salary. Sir William soon became almost totally dependent on Fitch for illustrating all things botanical, and thus started a long-lasting and close relationship between director and artist.

Fitch was not only blessed with remarkable skills of draughtsmanship, but could produce illustrations in rapid succession, drawing over 200 botanical plates in 1845 alone. It was not unusual for the artist to be working on four or five different publications simultaneously, often drawing directly onto the lithographic stone to save time, a technique requiring confidence and precision. Fitch’s illustrations were instrumental in raising the public profile of newly discovered and imported plant species. His large lithographs of the giant waterlily Victoria amazonica proved popular, as did his collaboration with Sir William’s son, Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) on the publication Rhododendrons of Sikkim Himalaya (1849-51). Hooker sent back to Fitch his own field sketches together with specimens to be illustrated and published. Fitch eventually resigned in 1877, but continued to paint botanical studies, landscapes, and also turned his hand to writing and wood engraving. In his lifetime Fitch executed some 10,000 drawings for various publications including nearly 3,000 for the Botanical Magazine.

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