Vishnu Prasad (or Vishnupersaud) was one of an expert team based at the Calcutta Botanic Garden and among many Indian artists employed by botanists of the British East India Company. Initially employed by surgeon and botanist Francis Buchanan to work on statistical surveys, after Buchanan’s departure in 1814 he worked for Dr William Roxburgh (Chief Botanist from 1793). In 1828 Prasad accompanied botanist John Forbes Royle to Saharanpur, to make drawings for Royle’s ‘Botany and other Branches of the Natural History of the Himalayan Mountains…’ (1833). He also illustrated Roxburgh’s ‘Plants of the Coast of Coromandel’ (1795) and Nathaniel Wallich’s ‘Tentamen Florae Napalensis Illustratae’ (1824-26) and ‘Plantae Asiaticae Rariores’ (1829-32).
