Herbert Charles Osterstock (1876-1942): JIHI artist and photographer

Osterstock was born in London in 1876. Before joining the staff at the JIHI he had worked as a cartoonist for the Whitehall Gazette under the name ‘Sphinx’. He produced coloured and black and white cartoons of leading figures, including most of the monarchs of Europe and Asia. He began working with JI scientists from at least 1912 before being taken on a more permanent basis in 1915.

The number of scientific journals containing illustrations by Osterstock is a record of the extent of his work. In the days before colour photography, the services of an artist were the only way to record colour and pigmentation. His usual method was pencil and watercolour on individual pieces of card. He worked from his own black and white photographs. Hand-coloured photographs were used as an intermediate stage or alternative to watercolour images.

He is best known for his beautiful illustrations of Sir A. Daniel Hall’s book The Genus Tulipa (1940). These paintings were made from the extensive living collection of tulips at JIHI.