While surfing the internet for reference pictures of ‘bonnets’, I came across the work of Harrison Fisher.
I think I died and went to heaven. I am in love! They are so beautiful.
Harrison Fisher was born in Brooklyn, NYC but spent most of his youth in San Francisco untilhe tued 21 years old. He then moved back to New York where he began his highly successful career as a magazine illustrator. Harrison Fisher never married, but his “secretary,” Kate Clemens, was also his lifetime partner.
His great grandfather, grandfather and father were all artists. His work began appearing in newspapers when he was only sixteen when the San Francisco Call newspaper began buying his sketches. During the 1890s, Harrison studied at the San Francisco Art Association and the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art. Soon he became a staff artist for the San Francisco Call, and later for the San Francisco Examiner, one of the largest newspapers in a chain owned by William Randolph Hearst.
In 1897, Fisher transferred to New York City, and within weeks became a staff artist for Puck Magazine. Fisher made a name for himself in the history of American illustration due to his talent in painting beautiful women. His “Fisher Girl” and, more specifically, his “American Girl”, became the epitome of beauty in America during the first quarter of the 20th century. She was feminine and beautiful but also independent and strong.
“The American Girl has found no more facile pencil than that wielded by Mr. Harrison Fisher. He has succeeded in creating a beautiful type distinctly his own.” ~ Ladies’ Home Journal, 1910.
“I love to draw.” ~Harrison Fisher.
On a very sad note, his paintings were valued very low as it was explained that illustrations had already been paid for and were published and therefore “are practically of very little value”. Fisher himself believed that they had little resale value. Some one hundred and thirteen pictures were appraised at $565 and fifty-three pen and ink drawings were valued at $159.
After his death, a relative kept a few paintings and burned over nine hundred of his remaining artworks, at his request.
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