Fritz Baumgarten (illustrator)

Fritz Baumgarten (18 August 1883, Reudnitz (now part of Leipzig) – 3 November 1966, Leipzig) was a German illustrator, lithographer, draftsman, and painter.

He illustrated several hundred published picture books, especially children's books, mainly in the 1920s to 1960s, most of which were published before World War II. He also illustrated postcards, Advent calendars, and picture books of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm.

His fantasy world was populated with animals, elves, and fairies, farm animals, children and teddy bears living in temperate forests and meadows. He acknowledged that his style of anthropomorphized animals, small beings, and plants was influenced by the illustrator Ernst Kreidolf. Fritz Baumgarten himself inspired the artist Lore Hummel.

He used light pen strokes richly painted with watercolours. His style was very modern for the time, loose and impressionistic, but was grounded in figure drawing, animal drawing and academic composition. His whole work has a definite feeling of possible, of real, of lived through scenes, almost down to earth, while at the same time being totally free-floating in imagination, almost psychedelic.