Her life's work was a collection of botanicals depicting California wildflowers, for which she is renowned and received gold and silver medals at expositions.

[8] As educational opportunities were made more available in the 19th century, women artists became part of professional enterprises, including founding their own art associations.

[11] Artists then, "played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplyfying this emerging type through their own lives.

Although she did travel to the East Coast of the United States, Italy and France to study and exhibit during her life, her career was rooted in San Francisco[8][14] where she was considered the "Grand Dame" of Nineteenth Century San Francisco women artists,[15] who was said to have "evinces a powerful genius" through the "magic of her brush.

[16][17] Chittenden was named the leading flower painter of America in Kate Field's Washington newspaper in March 1895.

[16] She gathered many specimens herself locally in the San Francisco Bay Area but also during long trips via horseback and stagecoach to the Sierra Nevada Mountains or the deserts of Southern California.

She received assistance from her friend Alice Eastwood,[18][19] who was the curator of botany at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

[8][16] Chittenden exhibited two paintings (one of chrysanthemums and another of roses) at the California State Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

From the Elizabeth Hay Bechtel Collection at the University of California, Berkeley, the paintings included Chamomile, Mayweed; Thimbleberry; Fairy Lantern, Globe Lily; and Common Evening Primrose.

An exhibit entitled "California Native Trees" was held in 1992 at the Helen Crocker Russell Library, San Francisco Botanical Garden, Golden Gate Park.