Royal Charles Steadman — USDA Pomological Watercolors

106 restored plates, 1915–1939, from the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection — with a biography from the archival record.

Royal Charles Steadman (1875–1964) was born in Portland, Maine. He joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1915 as a pomological artist in the Bureau of Plant Industry, was promoted to botanical artist in 1920, and retired in 1941. Over that career he became one of the collection’s most prolific hands: the National Agricultural Library credits him with more than 850 watercolours, from apples, grapes and plums to citrus and tropical fruit, and White and Neumann’s 1982 survey called him one of the most competent artists of the programme, though almost nothing personal survived in the destroyed pre-1921 personnel files. He signed his sheets “R. C. Steadman”.

Alongside painting he modelled fruit in wax for the department’s permanent record, and in 1932 was granted a U.S. patent for a process of reinforcing wax fruit models, which he dedicated to the public; a 1935 Harris & Ewing photograph in the Library of Congress shows him at work on wax apples. The National Agricultural Library also holds a small group of his sweet-potato and flower paintings from 1923–1928.

The plates

Every plate in our restored set credited to Royal Charles Steadman, by fruit then variety. Each has its own anchor (for example #cooper-early-white-apple). This is our holding, not the painter’s complete output; the National Agricultural Library holds the rest.

Fruit	Variety	Year	Plate
Apple	Cooper Early White	1924
Apple	Doctor Matthews	1916
Apple	Drumhaller	1926
Apple	Dudley	1927
Apple	Early Cooper	1926
Apple	Early Edward	1928
Apple	Grand Sultan	1922
Apple	Indian Favorite	1928
Apple	Indiana Favorite	1925
Apple	Indo	1929
Apple	Jersey Sweet	1927
Apple	Lall Beauty	1917
Apple	Lowland Raspberry	1927
Apple	Major	1915
Apple	Mammoth Pippin	1920
Apple	Northwestern	1919
Apple	Ogleby	1926
Apple	Ohio Pippin	1920
Apple	Summer Extra	1920
Apple	Winter Green	1929
Apple	Winter Paradise	1929
Avocado	Blakeman	1917
Avocado	Carabou	1917
Avocado	Colla	1918
Avocado	El Grande	1917
Avocado	Mccann	1918
Avocado	Perfecto	1918
Avocado	Queen	1919
Avocado	Sambert	1916
Cherry	Cass	1917
Cherry	Eveline	—
Cherry	Greenwood	1926
Cherry	Mahaleb Cherry	1920
Cherry	Morreau	1936
Cherry	Napolitana	1936
Cherry	Northwest	1916
Cherry	Valdimir	1920
Citrus	Sampson	1918
Citrus	Valencia	—
Citrus	Williams	1919
Gooseberry	Fay	1916
Grape	Brilliant	—
Grape	Captain	1933
Grape	Chicago	—
Grape	Creveling	—
Grape	Dakota	—
Grape	President	—
Grape	Presley	1933
Grape	Requa	—
Grape	Ripley	1939
Grape	Rockwood	—
Grape	Salem	1933
Grape	Tonebawa	—
Grapefruit	Dorthy Seedless	1921
Grapefruit	Duncan	1918
Grapefruit	Marsh	1919
Grapefruit	Marsh Seedless	1916
Grapefruit	Silver Cluster	1916
Lemon	Meyer	1926
Lemon	Perrine	1931
Mango	Baboony	1926
Mango	Carabao	1925
Mango	Hayden	1923
Mango	Johnson	1915
Mango	Pineapple	1918
Orange	Enterprise	1919
Orange	Hamlins Imp. Pineapple	1916
Orange	Owari	1919
Orange	Parson Brown	1921
Orange	Silverhill Satsuma	1931
Orange	Valencia	—
Peach	Admiral Dewey	1919
Peach	Babcock	1933
Peach	Improved Muir	1920
Peach	Wark	1918
Pear	Baldwin	1930
Pear	Beierschmitt	1927
Pear	Bossock	1922
Pear	Buffum	1921
Pear	Cincincis	1922
Pear	Conference	1916
Pear	Doyenne Levavasseur	1921
Pear	Drouard	1916
Pear	Druard	1921
Pear	Duchesse Bordeaux	1921
Pear	Elizabeth	1922
Pear	Favorita	1924
Pear	Flemish Beauty	1922
Pear	Good Christian	1920
Pear	Hardy	1926
Pear	Pineapple	1928
Pear	Reader	1919
Persimmon	Atago	1925
Persimmon	Fuyu	1925
Persimmon	Godbey	1924
Persimmon	Twentieth Century	1915
Plum	Black Bullach	1916
Plum	Mirabelle Tardive	1916
Plum	Winesap	1926
Pomegranate	Sacotons	1920
Quince	Champion	1918
Quince	Cydonia Oblonga	1918
Raspberry	Haymaker	1918
Strawberry	Eagle	1916
Strawberry	Glendale	1916
Strawberry	Hanback Beauty	1916

By period

Plates per year (this set)

Sources & citation

• Royal Charles Steadman Watercolors — NAL ArchivesSpace finding aid MS0258 (biographical note)
• U.S. Patent 1,860,601, 'Process for reenforcing models of fruit or other objects made of wax' (1932)
• Library of Congress, Picture This (2013): Harris & Ewing photograph of Steadman, 4 December 1935
• Royal Charles Steadman — Database of Scientific Illustrators 1450–1950, University of Stuttgart
• 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 Royal Charles Steadman — 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. 11 plates carry no year on the record. To cite this page: Madten, “Royal Charles Steadman — USDA Pomological Watercolors,” https://www.madten.com/reference/royal-charles-steadman-usda-watercolors, 2026-10-29.