The Fidler Sisters
By John Marks, Curator
Our exhibits this year have focused on art and artists. At the Geneva History Museum, we have Art By Genevans, and in November we will put up portraits of Genevans. Rose Hill Mansion has the exhibit Without Asking Permission: The Art of Agnes Swan Hutchins and Margaret Hutchins. Twice a month, through October, there is a special tour of the Mansion, “From Needle to Brush: Women and Art.”
I came across a thin folder in the archives under Artists for the Fidler sisters. The information was shared in 2007 by Richard Johnston of Guntersville, Alabama. After buying a print by Alice Fidler, he began searching the name on the internet. He found many prints and postcards for sale, but little biographical information and no essays. However, he knew Pearl, Alice, and Elsie Fidler appealed to the American taste for glamor girls.
Postcard by Elsie Fidler
Charles and Lillie Fidler moved from Pennsylvania to Romulus around 1877. They had three daughters and a son: Jessie (1877), Pearl (1880), Alice (1883), and Charles (1885). The elder Charles had a hay and grain business in Romulus, which he continued after the family moved to Geneva in 1891. Their last daughter, Elsie, was born in 1892.
Using nyshistoricnewspapers.org I did some more research. A headline in the June 3, 1901 Geneva Daily Times stated, “Two Geneva Artists Are Represented at the Pan-American Exposition.” Held in Buffalo, the Pan-Am was a big event but the article began with mentioning that Pearl [21 years old] and Alice [18] will have illustrations and “original watercolor heads of college girls” in upcoming Hobart College and Princeton University publications. It continued:
“Those who visit the Pan-American will find several color heads drawn by the Misses Fidler, on exhibition in the liberal arts department. Miss Alice Fidler sketches from life by a new method. She is in the year’s graduating class at the high school, and at the end of the school term intends to devote herself to art.”
1913 Hobart College class prom art by Elsie Fidler
Pearl, Alice, and Elsie Fidler sketched the modern American young woman, following in the footsteps of Charles Dana Gibson and Howard Chandler Christy. They didn’t break into magazine illustration as the men did, but their work was on hundreds of postcards and prints. Three of their series were Glamour Girl, American Girl, and College Lad and Lassie. Several companies printed their work. There are online examples of prints being customized for women’s colleges by adding initials or a school-color pennant.
As mentioned in the 1901 article, the sisters worked locally as well. They contributed art for the Hobart College Echo yearbook in 1901, 1913, and 1917. Elsie did the class proms art in 1912 for the 1913 book.
Postcard by Alice Fidler
I found the postcard on the left online. The seller listed this as a girl with a lacrosse stick wearing a Harvard sweater. It was signed by Alice, and copyrighted in 1906 by M.T. Myers & Son, a Geneva art store. We all know that an orange and purple H sweater is Hobart, not Harvard.
To my knowledge we don’t have any of the Fidler postcards or prints in our collection. We welcome any information or donations of their work. I’ll be talking more about these sisters in my lecture about Geneva artists on September 25 at 7 pm in the Geneva History Museum.
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