Hi, all. I have a quick question for anyone who might know a little
bit more information about the Harrison Fisher illustration
called "The Proposal." I saw it in the "Olive in Art" folder in this
forum, and merely because it struck my fancy aesthetically, and
because there's another Harrison Fisher work that features a girl who
looks like the same model in the same or a similar coat (leading me
to wonder if it, too, was Olive), I decided to do a bit of digging.
It turns out The Proposal is one in a series of works signifying the
most important moments of a girl's life (the proposal, the wedding,
the honeymoon, etc.); the whole series, called "The Six Greatest
Moments in a Girl's Life," is one of his more popular works and
extremely easy to find (in books, websites, reprinted posters and
post cards, etc.). After about two minutes of "digging" (idle
googling), I found the series in a charming little book
called "Harrison Fisher's American Girls in Miniature" published by
Schribner's. I was surprised to see a publishing date, however, for
1912. This date was later verified by a couple of other searches;
though, in the interest of full disclosure, I was also watching a
recorded UFO documentary at the same time and my level of diligence
wasn't the greatest. Anyway, I was under the impression that Olive
was not "discovered" until 1914? I've come across the story about
her winning the "Most Beautiful Girl in New York" contest in that
year a hundred times, and so I assume it's not apocryphal? But I
could very easily be wrong, since I'm light years from being an
expert on Olive. In any case, I assumed her career was a bit of a
whirlwind, with events (her modeling for Christy, Fisher, Coffin,
etc., then her introduction to Ziegfeld, then the movies and Jack
Pickford, then the Selznicks, then Vargas, then Paris, etc) happening
in quick succession, the whole thing ending within five or six
years. So, then, is a date of 1912 too early for the model in
question to be Olive? And have we therefore misidentified the girl
in "The Proposal?" It certainly looks like her -- especially in the
last, charming scene in the series ("Their New Love"), but a quick
perusal of Fisher's works shows that she fits very nicely into
his "ideal" of feminine beauty (all of the models as he depicts them
kind of look the same), which explains perhaps why he was so fond of
her as a model and spoke of her beauty with such hyperbole. Certain
features and indicators -- the right date, the dimpled chin, the
milky complexion, the wide, prominent eyes, one brow slightly more
arched than the other, dark hair sometimes described as "golden
brown," etc. -- that might point to Olive as the model in various
works might not be so conclusive, after all. I've found a few red
herrings myself (it turns out it's not actually that hard to find
information on the models in many of the illustrators' more
noteworthy works, especially if the model is famous, an actress like
Olive or a show girl like Justine Johnstone -- depicted so
beautifully by Kirchner! -- or an infamous socialite like Evelyn
Nesbit; or one the artist used frequently, like Christy's wife Nancy
and Vargas's wife Anna Mae). Anyway, thanks for bearing with me in
this stream of consciousness, if you've made it this far; and if
anyone knows a little bit more about Olive's modeling career, about
Fisher, and about "The Proposal" (or the series to which it belongs),
please let me know. As I indicated in an earlier message, I'm
especially interested in the famous illustrators of the early
twentieth century, so I'm always thirsty for information on them and
their muses (Gibson's "Eternal Question" drawing of Nesbit made me
inordinately obsessed with the Stanford White murder for a good month
or two last year, for instance). Also, I'm fascinated by Olive, so I
really WANT her to be the model in "The Proposal," but,
unfortunately, if she's not, she's not.

Thanks for any light you might shed! Hopefully, I'll someday offer
useful information instead of just questions.

Take care.

Kathleen