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.

They first lived in Bushnellsville, New York before moving to a house near the intersection of Elmendorf Street and Ten Broeck Avenue in nearby Kingston.

The house still stands today and has a large north facing window that gave Fischer the light he needed to paint.

He illustrated such stories as Kyne's "Cappy Ricks," Gilpatrick's "Glencannon," as well as serials by Kenneth Roberts, and Nordoff and Hall.

[1] From 1909 to 1920 he created more than one thousand illustrations featuring women and babies, pretty girls, dogs and horses, sports, the Navy and the sea.

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.

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.