William Fisher

William Fisher, son of a vicar, probably had enough financial assets to pursue his passion for painting. He served as Captain of the 1st Batallion of the Royal Fusiliers in World War I and was wounded in the first year of the war. Fisher was very keen to work as a war artist, and submitted some drawings, but was not commissioned. However, he showed his paintings at various exhibitions of the Army Officers’ Art Society in London between 1926-32. In 1933, Fisher was appointed director of the Wearmouth Coal Co., a position he held for at least 15 years together with his brother Reverend Thomas Lucas Thompson Fisher, probably until the company was liquidated in the early 1950s. In the 1939 England & Wales Register, William Fisher entered portrait painter as his profession. In the late 1940s he moved to Billockby Hall near Yarmouth, the address that was assigned to him in the catalog of the 1948 art competitions. Fisher died after a long illness.

Fate struck the family in 1940, when William Fisher’s son Lieutenant Michael Fisher lost his life in 1940 serving in World War II, and in 1960, when the eldest and only surviving son, Major William Fisher, Jr., was lost at sea, along with his three younger children, Henrietta (aged 11), Mark (7), and Francis (5), off Lasqueti Island, British Columbia. Fisher’s oil painting Village-Cricket was featured in the Art Competition catalog.