Louis Agassiz Fuertes

Background

Louis Agassiz Fuertes was born on February 7, 1874, at Ithaca, New York. His father, Estevan Antonio Fuertes, was a descendant of a prominent Spanish family. His mother, Mary Stone Perry Fuertes, of Dutch and English ancestry, was born in Troy, New York.

Education

Fuertes's talent in drawing and his love of birds began to show at an early age and developed without particular encouragement from parents or friends.

By the time he was eight or nine years old, he had definitely focused his attention upon painting birds, and when he was fourteen, according to an autobiographical sketch, his career was definitely settled.

He received his education in the public schools of Ithaca, New York, then in 1892, accompanied his parents to Europe and spent the year in a preparatory school in Zurich, Switzerland. On his return, he entered Cornell University and was graduated with the class of 1897.

In 1894, while on a glee club trip to Washington, D. C. , he met Elliott Coues and showed him some of his paintings. The encouragement which he received from the ornithologist was apparently a deciding factor in his career.

Following his graduation from Cornell, he spent a year studying with Abbott H. Thayer, which improved his technique very materially.

Career

With Abbott H. Thayer and his son, Gerald Thayer, Fuertes went to Florida in the spring of 1898. This was the first of a series of expeditions which widened his knowledge of the birds of North America.

In 1899, he went to Alaska with the famed Harriman expedition, and two years later, he visited western Texas and New Mexico with a party from the United States Biological Survey.

With Dr. F. M. Chapman, curator of birds at the American Museum in New York City, between 1902 and 1913, he visited the Bahamas, the Pacific Coast, the prairies of Saskatchewan and the Canadian Rockies, the Cuthbert Rookery in Florida, Yucatan and eastern Mexico, and Colombia, South America.

In addition to these expeditions, Fuertes visited Jamaica on his wedding journey in 1904; the Magdalen Islands and Bird Rock in 1909 with Leonard Cutler Sanford; and after a dozen years spent mostly in his studio at Ithaca, in 1926—27, he made an expedition to little-known parts of Abyssinia with Dr. Wilfred IT. Osgood for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

From 1923 to 1927, he was a lecturer in ornithology at Cornell University.

Achievements

• Fuertes left a collection of some 3, 500 beautifully prepared bird skins and over a thousand field and studio sketches of more than 400 different kinds of birds. His greatest collection, however, was the series of mental images of each bird which seemed to be indelibly impressed upon his mind with all the accuracy of a photographic plate. Fuertes is commemorated by two species. One is a species named by his colleague Frank Chapman as Icterus fuertesi, although it is now considered a subspecies of the orchard oriole. The other, Fuertes's parrot, or Hapalopsittaca fuertesi, was rediscovered in 2002 after 91 years of presumed extinction. Fuertes also painted dozens of mammal portraits for The National Geographic Magazine in 1916 and 1918, and inspired the Society to hire an artist of their own, Walter A. Weber.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Louis Agassiz Fuertes Art - Birds & Animals - Classic Collection: Digital Age Edition

    (Content includes a collection of Art by Louis Agassiz Fue...)

  • To a Young Bird Artist: Selected Letters from Louis Agassiz Fuertes to George Miksch Sutton ; Commentary by Dr. Sutton.

    (Letters and commentary reveal how that busy and successfu...)

  • The Burgess Animal Book for Children w/ Color Illustrations By Louis Agassiz Fuertes

    (Hardback book (no dust jacket) titled THE BURGESS ANIMAL ...)

  • Louis Agassiz Fuertes & the singular beauty of birds: Paintings, drawings, letters

    (Authors: F.G. Marcham Publisher: Joanna Cotler Books Keyw...)

  • Portfolio of Texas Birds: The Color Plates from the First Edition of " The Bird Life of Texas "
  • Album of Abyssinian Birds and Mammals from Paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes
  • The Burgess Bird Book for Children (Illustrated)

Views

Quotations: "The principal sensation one gets in the tropical forests is the mystery of the unknown voices. Many of these remain forever mysteries unless one stays long and seeks diligently. "

Personality

Fuertes was a tireless worker in the field and never lost an opportunity to add to his collection of birds or sketches.

When examining a bird, his concentration was supreme; he was oblivious to everything about him; and during these moments, apparently, details of pose and expression were so fixed in his mind that years afterward he could reproduce them with his pencil and brush without the slightest hesitation.

His paintings, which illustrate most of the leading bird books published between 1896 and 1927, are characterized by a beauty of draftsmanship and a devotion to truth which are manifested not only in the accuracy of every detail of plumage and form, but in the perfection attained in reproducing the characteristic attitudes and expressions of each species.

Connections

On June 2, 1904, Fuertes was married to Margaret F. Sumner of Ithaca, by whom he had two children.

Father:

Estevan Antonio Fuertes

Mother:

Mary Stone Perry Fuertes

Wife:

Margaret F. Sumner

References

• A Celebration of Birds: The Life and Art of Louis Agassiz Fuertes