Researching Paul Fischer

After military service (11th Hussars) he joined the lute and guitar maker David Rubio at Duns Tew, Oxfordshire. With the benefit of Fischer's experience, Rubio began making harpsichords, soon to be followed by theorbos, viheulas, pandoras, citterns and baroque guitars. Bowed instruments were to follow. As the workforce expanded to meet increasing demand, Fischer was appointed manager and oversaw the making of this wide range of instruments until establishing his own studio in 1975.

Fischer set up shop in Chipping Norton. The award of a Winston Churchill Fellowship and Southern Arts bursary at this time, provided the opportunity to take up the challenge. From this and the work of physicist Dr. Bernard Richardson the 'Taut' system of construction was developed.

Fischer was born at Hanover on 16 September 1786. He was the youngest of three sons of a line-engraver, who died very soon after the birth of the youngest child, leaving his family in poverty. At the age of fourteen, Fischer was placed as a pupil with Johann Heinrich Ramberg, the fashionable court painter, by whom he was employed in painting portraits, theatrical scenery, and generally assisting his master. He became capable of earning enough money to support his mother. In 1810 he betook himself to England, and his Hanoverian connection rendered it easy for him to obtain the patronage of royalty.

He painted miniature portraits of Queen Charlotte and the junior members of the royal family, and was employed by the Prince Regent to paint a series of military costumes. In 1817 he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy, and continued to do so up to 1852, occasionally contributing also to the Suffolk Street Exhibitions. His works were chiefly portraits in miniature, but he occasionally exhibited landscapes in watercolours. He continued to paint up to his eighty-first year, and died 12 September 1875. Fischer was an industrious but inferior artist. Some sketches by him in the print room at the British Museum show spirit and intelligence, especially two pencil portraits of William Hunt and his wife. He published a few etchings and lithographs.