What's it Worth? Harrison Fisher's women

From Mercury News: What's it Worth? Harrison Fisher's women
Q: I inherited a number of pictures signed "Harrison Fisher," and I'm trying to determine the value of them. The larger one carries a plea from Woodrow Wilson -- "I summon you to Comradeship in the Red Cross" -- and measures 30 by 39 inches. The second reads, "Have you answered the Red Cross Christmas Roll Call?" and is 20 by 27 inches. Each has a copyright date of 1918.

A: Harrison Fisher, sometimes referred to as "The Father of a Thousand Girls," was a hugely prolific illustrator. Fisher, son of landscape artist Hugo Anton Fisher, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1877. The family moved to Alameda in 1887 where, in addition to being instructed by his father, Fisher and his brother studied at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art in San Francisco.

Fisher's goal in life was to become an illustrator and commercial painter, rather than striving to be a portraitist. At 17, he made his first sale, a drawing of an Indian maiden, to a playing card company; a year later his political cartoon, "Japan-Made America," appeared in the humor magazine Judge.

At age 18, Fisher began work as a staff illustrator for San Francisco's Morning Call while continuing to produce freelance magazine work. William Randolph Hearst, who later contracted Fisher to do a portrait of his mistress, Marion Davies, hired Fisher away from the Call and brought him to the Examiner as an illustrator of society functions and sporting events.

Hearst then sent Fisher to New
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York to illustrate for his newly acquired New York Journal. Hearst encouraged his illustrator to pursue freelance work, as the more Fisher was published the greater was his value in the Hearst empire.

Fisher painted women as beauties, as athletes, as teases, as scholars, as brides and as mothers. In 1908, he published his first of nine books illustrating idealized women. He even featured a section about college women playing sports.

He did cover illustrations for Puck, Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal and American Magazine, and over an uninterrupted period of 22 years he produced 293 cover illustrations for Cosmopolitan. His work was so popular in his day that his images were reproduced on postcards, calendars, candy tins, sheet music, novelty mirrors and tape measures.

Fisher's women were depicted as healthy, intelligent, independent and hardworking. Your 1918 color lithograph posters for the Red Cross show Fisher women as Red Cross nurses imploring women, who out of necessity had taken on many masculine roles during the war, and men to heed the call of patriotism and sacrifice.

At his request, most of Fisher's original work was destroyed after his death. Still, hundreds have come on the market with prices ranging from $1,000 to $30,000.

Period lithographic poster like yours, depicting a poignant and important period in world history, can bring in the low to mid hundreds, depending on the condition. These two iconic images as well as scores of other Fisher women are still being reproduced today.

In the spirit of the season please heed these posters and contribute blood, time or money to this worthy cause.