Ellen Isham Schutt
Ellen Isham Schutt was an early 20th-century American botanical illustrator for the US Department of Agriculture’s Division of Pomology, which was chartered to create a national register of fruits. She worked there between 1904 and 1914 and during this period, she painted over 700 watercolors of fruits and nuts. Her subjects ranged from the common (such as apples and hickory nuts) to the then-exotic (including bael, custard apple, and cashew nuts). Quite a few show fruit damage from molds, insects, and other causes. Her precise and rather dry style resulted in watercolors that at times look more like drawings than paintings. She signed her USDA watercolors E.I. Schutt. She also modeled some fruit, such as apples and pears, in wax to demonstrate the effects of long storage and packaging upon fruit.
Beginning in 1911, the University of California commissioned Schutt to paint watercolors of apples grown locally and showing damage from conditions ranging from disease and insect damage to storage injury. One scholar argues that this series of "hyperreal" images amounts to an implied representation of the idea of a perfect or normal apple, a vision suitable to Progressive era aspirations of control over natural forces like decay.
P.S. Meet Barbara Regina Dietzsch, one of finest female botanical artists in history. Click here. :)