Fitton was a life-long etcher and a member of the printmaking establishment. He was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy and was elected to the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1903.

No one profited more than Hedley Fitton from the vogue for collecting etchings that swept England in the 1920s. His work fell from favor when works such as this view of Strasbourg Cathedral were thought to be over-large, too elaborate and unfashionably Victorian.