Friday at Auction Finds is readers’ questions day. I try to guide readers to resources for them to determine the value of their items. I’m not able to appraise their treasures, but I can do some preliminary research to get them started. So, these are market values based on prices I find on the web, not appraisal for insurance purposes that I suggest for items that have been determined to be of great value.
Today’s question is about Harrison Fisher’s prints titled “Greatest Moments of a Girl’s Life.”
Question:
I found 4 of the “Greatest Moments of a Girl’s Life.” I really enjoy them but they are not postcards, just thick paper about 3 ½ by 5 ¾. I was just wondering if they are valuable.
Answer:
This email grew out of a blog post I wrote last year about six framed postcards with images purporting to show the stages of a woman’s life, from proposal to marriage to children.
The images were created around 1911 by an artist named Harrison Fisher, the illustrator of beautiful white women who became known as “Fisher Girls” – described as “the epitome of feminine beauty … lithe, elegant and beautiful but also athletic, independent, and intelligent” in an americanillustration.org biography of the artist.
I found a lot of references on the web to Fisher’s series of “Greatest Moments” postcards but nothing about prints of that size. Some folks on eBay were selling what they described as prints, framed, but I suspect that they were postcards.
The “Greatest Moments” series first ran in the Ladies Home Journal in 1911 titled “The Greatest Period in a Girl’s Life.” The Journal was one of several magazines, including the Saturday Evening Post, for which Fisher illustrated.
Two of the drawings were on the cover in color: “The Wedding (May 15, 1911)” and “Their New Love (October 1911).” The others were inside in black and white: “The Proposal (March 15, 1911),” “The Trousseau (April 15, 1911),” “The Honeymoon (July 15, 1911)” and “The First Evening in Their New Home (August 1911).”
Fisher was apparently immensely popular, and so were his illustrations. “Greatest Moments” also turned up in books and newspapers:
The series was among a group of 32 color plates of Harrison’s prints published in 1912 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, which also produced the postcards. Called “Harrison Fisher’s American Girls in Miniature,” the book measured 8″ x 5.5″.
In 1913, the six were included in an art book of 16 color plates published by Scribner’s. Only 6,250 copies of the book, titled “A Girl’s Life and Other Pictures by Harrison Fisher,” were printed, according to the site harrisonfisher.com. The site was selling a complete book for $1,300 and it was sold. Some people may have torn out the prints for framing, the site speculated, leaving complete books scarce. The book measures 12 3/8″ x 17 1/2″, which appears to also be the size of the prints.
In the Friday, May 8, 1914, edition of the Boston Evening Transcript, an ad for the Boston Globe mentioned that the series would be published in the magazine section of the Globe. It was set to start that Sunday with “The Proposal.”
A May 3, 1914, ad in the Oregonian newspaper in Portland noted that the series would be published in the Sunday May 10, 1914, edition. According to the ad, Fisher was a popular artist whose works boosted the circulation of the Saturday Evening Post up 40,000 to 45,000 when they were printed in the magazine.
The illustrations in these cases appeared to be much larger than the reader’s prints, which are closer to the size of a postcard.
Since the reader didn’t send photos, I have no idea if these were originally done around the same time as the postcards. Since I could not find any prints that size, I wasn’t able to determine the value or what they were selling for.
The six framed postcards sold for $5 to $100 on eBay. Many of the single postcards were not selling at all.
