Theodore Henry Adolphus Fielding came from a large family that included five landscape painters. He was known for his large-scale paintings and for his many elaborate colorplate books. During his career, Fielding was employed both as a drawing master and as a master of aquatint. In the nineteenth century, Ackermann and Company was a prominent publisher of drawing and painting manuals for amateur and aspiring artists. These manuals disseminated the standards encompassed by the traditional school of British watercolor. The success of art manuals was in part due to the publisher's ability to illustrate the books using acquatint, an etching process, together with hand-coloring, in an effort to simulate actual watercolor washes.
Illustrated: title page and hand-colored frontispiece from manual on painting