Harrison Fisher was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 27, 1875. His great-grandfather, grandfather and father were all artists. Harrison Fisher began to draw almost as soon as he could hold a pencil. Fisher was a talented illustrator; 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. Like so many artists who come to the city of their hopes, Harrison Fisher began by taking a number of his drawings under his arm and showing them to various art editors. 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.

The multiplicity of magazines and the increasing use of illustrations in books in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries opened a field for the young artist that brought rich rewards in fame as well as in more material ways. With the invention of the half-tone and the line etching process a way was opened for the greatest freedom in technique, and as soon as it became possible by means of a series of plates to reproduce drawings in color, there was no longer any reason why the artist could not do his work in any medium he preferred.

Fisher made drawings of accidents, street scenes of all sorts, caricatures, portrait sketches of distinguished men and beautiful women, and the thousand things that helped make the late 1890s newspaper a pictorial review of the passing days. Harrison Fisher was one of the young men of the day who helped in giving artistic distinction to the first years of the Saturday Evening Post of Philadelphia, and in its pages appeared many of his early drawings, including those for Harold Frederic’s story, The Market Place, which brought him fame. For a number of years he was a constant contributor to all of the leading magazines. In 1897, Fisher transferred to New York City, and within weeks became a staff artist for Puck Magazine.

In the early 1900s, Harrison Fisher developed a particular fancy for drawings dealing especially with well-dressed and well-groomed young American men and women. For years the Gibson girl was the accepted ideal type, and her counterfeit personage might be found in the room of nearly every college girl from Maine to California. Fisher made a name for himself in the history of American illustration due to his talent in painting these 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.

Fisher’s well-bred and healthy-minded American Girl was delightfully free from pose; mistress of herself as she looked out upon the world with an assurance born of the realization that she was an accepted ornament of society. The Fisher young women were not show girls, dressmakers, models, or millinery exhibits, but the sort often associated with a May afternoon walk on upper Fifth Avenue or a day at the Country Club. She was feminine and beautiful but also independent and strong.

Antique Harrison Fisher prints are sought after by collectors and interior designers. Reproductions of Fisher’s “American Girl” are readily available and make a charming and affordable addition to any room décor. Many of Fisher’s designs are also featured in stationary and greeting cards today.