L.Krieg.

Louis Charles Christopher Krieger (11 February 1873 – 31 July 1940) was an American mycologist and botanical illustrator who was considered the finest painter of North American fungi.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland on February 11, 1873, Krieger received his early education from the Lutheran schools in that city. He showed artistic talents at an early age, and at 13 enrolled in the Maryland Institute School of Art and Design. Krieger continued his studies at the Charcoal Club of Baltimore and the Schuler School of Fine Arts. He married Agnes Checkley Keighler in 1904; she died in 1939. They had one daughter.

At the age of 18, Krieger started employment as an artist assistant in the Division of Microscopy at the Department of Agriculture, and spent time painting mushrooms found around the District of Columbia area. When the Secretary of Agriculture, Julius Sterling Morton, closed the department in 1895, Krieger spent a year in Munich at the Royal Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. After returning to America in 1896, he became an instructor of drawing and painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art and Design. Although he developed a reputation as a portrait painter, Krieger did not particularly enjoy this employment, finding it dull.

In 1902, Krieger started working as a botanical illustrator for mycologist William Gilson Farlow at Harvard University, a position that lasted for the next decade. During this time, he earnestly immersed himself in his work, painting over 350 images of mushrooms. He also started indexing the world's mycological literature, a project that continued for the next 30 years.

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