Bertha Heiges — USDA Pomological Watercolors
130 restored plates, 1896–1908, from the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection — with a biography from the archival record.
Bertha Heiges (active 1896–1907) is the least documented of the principal USDA fruit painters. Born in Pennsylvania, she was working in Washington as a government illustrator by 1899 and painted for the Department of Agriculture’s Division of Pomology from about 1896 to 1907. In that decade she produced more than six hundred watercolours now in the National Agricultural Library’s Pomological Watercolor Collection — grapes, pears, plums, peaches, currants and nuts among them — placing her seventh among the collection’s sixty-odd artists.
Her Damson plums was issued as a colour plate in the department’s 1905 Yearbook. Pre-1921 USDA personnel records were destroyed, and no account of her training or later life has been published; genealogical databases record a Bertha Heiges (1866–1956) who died in San Diego, but that identification rests on unpublished records and is not repeated here as fact.
The plates
Every plate in our restored set credited to Bertha Heiges, by fruit then variety. Each has its own anchor (for example #blenheim-pippin-apple). This is our holding, not the painter’s complete output; the National Agricultural Library holds the rest.
By period
1890–1899 · 40 plates
40 plates in this set from the 1890s: stone fruit (19), pears (11), apples (5).
Conkling Apple · Early Cluster Apple · Ohio Nonpareil Apple · Red Raspberry Apple · Willowmeade Apple · Angouleme Cherry · Carnation Cherry · Olympia Cherry · Sekar Endjere Fig · Smyrna Fig · White Smith Gooseberry · Triumph Grapefruit · Bequett Cling Peach · Dennis Peach · Early Canada Peach · Early Rivers X Elberta Peach · Pearl Peach · Quality Peach · B.S. Fox Pear · Comice Pear · Deweys Premium Pear · Doyenne Sieulle Pear · Duchess Precoce Pear · Eastern Belle Pear · Gansel Bergamotte Pear · Groveland Pear · Napoleon Pear · President Drouard Pear · Stuyvesant Pear · Abundance Plum · Arkansas Lombard Plum · Bradshaw Plum · Dawson Prune Plum · Gonzales Plum · Kerr Plum · Middleburg Plum · Newman Plum · Niagara Plum · Silver Prune Plum · Fuller Quince
1900–1909 · 90 plates
90 plates in this set from the 1900s: stone fruit (55), apples (12), pears (9).
Blenheim Pippin Apple · Cain Apple · Colorado Orange Apple · Donald Apple · Dula Beauty Apple · Hungarian Apple · Makefield Apple · Mcmullen Apple · Northfield Beauty Apple · Rhode Island Greening Apple · Wasserziekerks Apple · Yellow Bellflower Apple · Early Golden Apricot · Sparks Mammoth Apricot · Baldwin Avocado · Red Jacket Cherry · Naranja Alotonilco Citrus · Black Alicante Grape · Chisholm Arbor Grape · Satine Blanc Grape · Thomas Grape · Standard Grapefruit · American Wonder Lemon · Dugat Orange · Otaheita Orange · Angel Peach · Capitol Peach · Cheves Peach · Chinese Free Peach · Clara Cling Peach · Columbia Peach · Connett Peach · Dennington Peach · Doctor Black Peach · Ford Peach · Fox Peach · Frances Peach · Harris Early Peach · Hiley Peach · John Haas Peach · Late Erris Peach · Lord Palmerston Peach · Maggie Peach · Nell Peach · Pallas Peach · Parnell Peach · Parsons Early Peach · Persia Peach · Ray Peach · Stambaugh Peach · Sunrise Peach · Waddell Peach · Waldo Peach · Walker Peach · Zea Peach · Angouleme Pear · Austrian Vergaleuse Pear · Bergamote Esperens Pear · Epworth Pear · Florida Bartlett Pear · Garber Pear · Goodale Pear · Spina Del Carpio Pear · Triumph de Vienne Pear · Corean Persimmon · All Fruit Plum · America Plum · Barkley Plum · Bartlett Plum · Beta Plum · Burbank Plum · Climax Plum · Combination Plum · Engre Plum · Etta Plum · Excelsior Plum · Golden Queen Plum · Hand Plum · Jones Plum · Lota Plum · Marketman Plum · Miracle Plum · Red Nagate Plum · Surprise Plum · White Queen Plum · Willard Plum · Winter Damson Plum · Cuthbert Raspberry · Eureka Strawberry · Giant Strawberry
Plates per year (this set)
Sources & citation
- Bertha Heiges — Database of Scientific Illustrators 1450–1950, University of Stuttgart
- Bertha Heiges — Wikidata
- Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation — art collection catalogue (1905 Yearbook plate)
- White, J. & Neumann, A. (1982), 'The collection of pomological watercolors at the U.S. National Arboretum', Huntia 4(2): 103–124 — Appendix I, 'Some U.S.D.A. artists'
- Pomological Watercolor Collection — Wikipedia (per-artist counts, citing the National Agricultural Library)
- Watercolor paintings by Bertha Heiges — Wikimedia Commons (the NAL digitisation)
- USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection — National Agricultural Library (the originals, with catalogue records)
- USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection — finding aid (NAL ArchivesSpace MS0184)
- The collection on Wikimedia Commons
The original watercolours are in the public domain. The restorations shown here are Madten’s, at web resolution. To cite this page: Madten, “Bertha Heiges — USDA Pomological Watercolors,” https://www.madten.com/reference/bertha-heiges-usda-watercolors, 2026-10-29.