Anton Otto Fischer

Anton Otto Fischer (February 23, 1882 – March 26, 1962) was a German-born American illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post.

Background Born in Germany and orphaned at any early age, he ran away at the age of 15 to escape being forced into priesthood. He came to America as a deck hand on a German vessel. He sacrificed two months’ pay to obtain his freedom and then went on to sail on American ships for three years. For a fourteen-month period in 1905–1906, he worked as a model and general handyman for artist Arthur Burdette Frost. He went to Paris in October 1906 and studied for two years with Jean Paul Laurens at the Academie Julian, spending summers painting landscapes in Normandy. Fischer returned to New York City in January 1908. After being influenced by Howard Pyle, he moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where he established a studio at 1110 Franklin Street. Pyle helped him transform his firsthand knowledge into pictorial drama, but had little success in enlivening his lead-colored palette. He freelanced in "subject pictures," or illustrations telling a human interest story that were in popular magazines of the day.

Career as an illustrator After moving back to New York City in 1910, Fischer sold his first illustration to Harper's Weekly, then illustrated an Everybody's Magazine story by Jack London, for whom he would illustrate many books and magazine stories until London's death in 1916. Also in 1910, Fischer began illustrating for The Saturday Evening Post, a relationship that would last for forty-eight years. He illustrated such stories as Kyne's "Cappy Ricks," Gilpatrick's "Glencannon," as well as serials by Kenneth Roberts, and Nordoff and Hall.

U.S. Navy Commander Lincoln Lothrop had once written to the artist: "My two lads, one of whom is now a twenty-two-year-old lieutenant in the Navy … used to cut out your pictures and pin them on the walls of their rooms. … You are responsible for recruiting many a seagoing lad." His work on seascapes got Fischer an invitation to lunch with Vice Admiral Russell Waesche, Commandant of the Coast Guard, for the purpose of recruiting at the height of World War II. The January 9, 1943, Post described a good encounter with the Vice Admiral. Although Waesche knew Fischer was born in (Germany) and anti-New Dealer, but by late that same afternoon, Fischer was sworn in as a lieutenant commander in the Coast Guard. He was charged with putting on canvas some of the heroic deeds of the Merchant Mariners and Coast Guardsmen, then considered at the time the least publicized men of the armed forces.

Examples of Fischer's work