"The Study Hour (The College Girl at Her Studies)." Illustration for the College Girls series, first published in The Ladies' Home Journal, April 1908, and subsequently reprinted in books and advertisements. The piece is accompanied by a tear sheet from The Ladies Home Journal.
Fisher's illustrations of American life, and especially his young women, were among the most beloved and popular of commercial imagery. The College Girls is the first in a series he created for "The Ladies' Home Journal," and Sunday newspaper supplements. Charles Scribner's Sons reprinted many of the images for his books, and this painting bears the publisher's name in pencil in the lower margin. The Study Hour was appeared in their "The American Girl (1909), again in "Fair Americans" (1911) and in a product advertisement for Occident Flour. Welch: pages 60 (#7), 87 (#63), 230 (#3).
Tipped to matte and framed.
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Harrison Fisher
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Harrison Fisher became nationally known for his illustrations of beautiful women, known as the Harrison Fisher Girls. His illustrations appeared frequently in "Saturday Evening Post", "Scribner's", "Life", and "Cosmopolitan".He was born in Brooklyn, New York, a third generation artist in a family that included his grandfather, Felix Xiver Fisher and his father, Hugo Antoine Fisher. His grandparents emigrated from Austria, an area that is now in Czechoslovakia, with the family name of Fischer. For unknown reasons, the spelling later changed to Fisher after immigration.
The immigrants lived in New York City, and Harrison was born in 1875. When he was nine years old, he moved with his family to Alameda, California and attended public schools. Two years later, in 1889, his mother, age 35, died of Peritonitis. Their father took his two sons Hugo Melville and Harrison, on a lengthy sketching trip along the Pacific coast, and then they settled again in Alameda.
The father instructed his sons in drawing and painting, and they also studied at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art, formerly the San Francisco Art Association. Amedee Joullin, noted for his paintings of the Aztec Indians, was especially influential on Harrison's work. In 1894, Hugo Anton and his sons opened an art studio at 506 Battery Street in San Francisco, and that same year, one of Harrison's political cartoons titled JAPAN-MADE AMERICA appeared in the humor magazine Judge.
The following year, Harrison began working in the news room as a Staff Artist for the "Morning Call", later the "San Francisco Call". He did drawings of sporting events, society functions and pen and ink illustrations for short stories. He continued to do free-lance work for "Judge" magazine. About a year later, William Randolph Hearst hired him for the "San Francisco Examiner", and then sent him to New York to beef up the "New York Journal", which Hearst had just acquired. Harrison's work was so popular that he accepted an offer from PUCK magazine, a rival of "Judge" and one of the nation's first humor magazines. He also did "Saturday Evening Post" covers and other magazine work, and for some time, there was scarcely a leading publication that did not have his work.
By 1906, he was rehired by Hearst for the American Magazine, renamed The American Weekly. Harrison also illustrated for Hearst publications, the most widely circulated in the country, which made the illustrator very famous. He was a top cover artist for Cosmopolitan and had a studio near their offices.
When he died, a family member who inherited his work, at the artist's request, kept the paintings she wanted and burned the rest including 800 of Harrison's originals.
Walt Reed, "The Illustrator in America"
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Walt Reed, "The Illustrator in America"
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Via AskArt
