Frederick Schoenfeld

Frederick Schoenfeld aka Fritz Schoenfeld (1810, Switzerland – 21 April 1868, Richmond, Victoria), was a Swiss-born Australian artist, printmaker, lithographer and art teacher.

He is noted for providing the illustrations for the 6 volumes (1859–68) of Fragmenta phytographiae Australiae by Ferdinand von Mueller, then director of the National Herbarium of Victoria, and for The Plants Indigenous to the Colony of Victoria (1860–65) and Analytical Drawings of Australian Mosses (1864).

Schoenfeld arrived in Australia on 8 May 1858 on board the Scottish Chief, and worked in Melbourne as a freelance artist, lithographer and drawing master.

[1] In the 1860s Schoenfeld gave drawing classes at the "Melbourner Deutscher Turnverein", but when the club’s premises were destroyed by a fire in December 1866 he was left with no regular income.

He became depressed about his straitened circumstances and after an unsuccessful first attempt at suicide, drowned himself in a water-filled quarry at Richmond.