Property from the Bill and Dorothy Fisher Collection: Sold to Benefit The Community of Marshalltown, Iowa

Throughout their lives, Bill and Dorothy Fisher demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to their community in Marshalltown, Iowa, seeking to make their midwestern city a thriving, vibrant, and inspiring place to live. For decades, the couple tirelessly dedicated themselves to enriching the lives of the residents of Marshalltown by promoting creative pursuits across categories—including theater, music, dance, opera, and fine art. Through their forward-thinking generosity and advocacy, they stand as exemplars of the importance of giving back to one’s community.

This fall, Christie’s presents masterworks from the Fishers’ art collection, featuring works by many of the leading figures of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, including Paul Signac, Camille Pissarro, Eugène Boudin, Pierre Bonnard, Alfred Sisley and Henri Matisse. To honor the Fishers’ inimitable legacy of generosity, auction proceeds will benefit the Marshalltown Arts & Civic Center, a gathering place that welcomes local groups from all industries with the goal of inspiring new conversations, driving engagement, and fostering creativity for future generations.

Jasper William Fisher, known affectionately as Bill, was born into a family that had already made its mark on Marshalltown with the founding of the Fisher Governor Company, one of the world’s oldest and largest producers of valves and regulators, which began with Bill’s grandfather in 1880. From an early age, Bill had demonstrated a propensity towards the arts and, following his mother’s love of music, he studied harmony, composition, saxophone, and the pipe organ while still at school. Instead of continuing a career in the arts, however, he opted to enter the family business after studying at Iowa State University, where he met his future wife, Dorothy. In just fifteen years as the company’s president, Bill took the business from a $2 million a year concern to one worth over $100 million, before selling it to Monsanto.

The company’s success allowed Bill and Dorothy, along with other members of the family, to explore their passions and become major benefactors of the arts in Marshalltown and beyond. Together with his two sisters, Martha Ellen Tye and Emily Cartwright, Bill established the Gramma Fisher Foundation, in honor of their mother who nurtured their passion for music. The Foundation has supported dance companies, theater groups, operas, along with the arts more widely. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Foundation donated millions of dollars to The Metropolitan Opera in New York, in addition to financing dozens of operatic productions across the country, making it one of the largest benefactors of opera in the United States.

Bill and Dorothy began their art collection in the early 1960s, and acquired the majority of the works over the course of the following decade. A centerpiece of the collection is Paul Signac’s Quimper (Quai de l’Odet), a vibrant example of the artist’s mature pointillist style. Depicting the Odet river as it flows through the city of Quimper in Brittany, with the Saint Corentin Cathedral visible in the distance beneath the arc of a rainbow, the painting is executed in a dynamic play of short, parallel strokes of pigment. Works by Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and Pierre Bonnard, meanwhile, study the transformation of the landscape through the changing seasons. Sisley’s Vieille chaumière aux Sablons, environs de Veneux-Nadon depicts the clear, crisp blue skies of a winters day, Pissarro captures the frigid atmosphere of the countryside beneath a fresh blanket of snow in Neige et givre à Eragny, while Bonnard’s La sortie d'automne ou Les Elégantes depicts an elegant trio out for a brisk walk in nature, enjoying the changing colors of early fall.

In Venise, le campanile, le Palais Ducal et la Piazzetta vue prise de San Giorgio (esquisse), Eugène Boudin studies a classic view of Venice with a modern sensibility, capturing the famed waterways of La Serenissima through quick, fluid strokes of pigment. Henri Matisse’s Portrait de Madame Matisse dans une glace (Nature morte aux oeufs) is a rare early painting by the artist, created during a pivotal year in his professional life, as he participated in the Paris Salon for the first time. The praise and recognition he received at the exhibition would prove essential for Matisse, encouraging him to continue his painting career. The composition is an intriguing blend of portraiture and still life, focusing on an informal arrangement of quotidian, household items in a corner of the artist’s studio, while above, a mirror depicts the reflection of the artist’s paramour. Together, this selection of artworks from the Fishers’ collection showcases their keen eye for quality and appreciation for this ground-breaking era in the history of art.

The sale of these artworks will continue Bill and Dorothy Fisher’s extraordinary legacy of giving to the community of Marshalltown, ensuring their visionary support will impact new generations of residents who call the city home. In particular, the funds will allow the Marshalltown Arts & Civic Center, founded by the Fisher family over seventy years ago, to continue to be a focal point for the community, a space to showcase, connect, and convene, working to improve the quality of life for the whole community.