Louis Agassiz Fuertes - Biography

Biography

Fuertes was born in Ithaca, New York and was the son of Estevan and Mary Stone Perry Fuertes. His father came from a prominent Spanish family in San Juan, Puerto Rico and was a professor of civil engineering at Cornell University and for sometime dean of civil engineering. Estevan named his son after Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807 – 1873). His mother, born in Troy, was of Dutch ancestry. Young Louis became interested in birds at very early age, securing birds with a slingshot and examing them carefully. As a child he had been influenced by Audubon's Birds of America. At the age of fourteen, he made his first painting of a bird, a male Red Crossbill, from life. He learnt to keep careful records of the appearance, habits and voices of birds. In 1890 he had sent a specimen that he collected to the Smithsonian and had received comments on its rarity and in 1891, when Louis was 17 years old he became an Associate Member of the American Ornithologists' Union. He was encouraged by his father's colleagues at the university including Burt G. Wilder and Liberty H. Bailey. In June 1892, he accompanied his parents to Europe and sketched birds and animals at the Jardin de Plantes. In September he joined the Institute of Keller, a school in Zurich, staying on for a year. Returning to America, he joined Cornell in 1893, choosing to study architecture. His older brother James however found that he lacked an aptitude for geometry and mathematics and attempts to coach him resulted in Louis falling asleep. During one lecture, he got out of class-room window and climbed a tree to investigate a strange bird call. His interest in singing led him to join the Cornell University Glee Club. In 1894, the Glee Club went on a tour to Washington, D.C., where another member of the club suggested that Louis could meet his uncle Elliott Coues, who was interested in birds. This meeting was a turning pointand Coues recognized his talent and spread the word on Fuertes' works. In 1895 Coues exhibited fifty of the works of Fuertes at the Congress of the American Ornithologists' Union at Washington, a meeting that Louis was unable to attend. He received the first of his many commissions for illustrating birds while still an undergraduate. At Cornell, he was elected to the Sphinx Head Society, the oldest senior honor society at the University. In 1896 Coues invited Fuertes to attend the Ornithological Congress at Cambridge in England. He graduated from Cornell in 1897 and decided to work with Abbott H. Thayer. In 1898, he made his first expedition, with Thayer and his son Gerald, to Florida.

In 1899, he accompanied E. H. Harriman on his famous exploration of the Alaska coastline, the Harriman Alaska Expedition. Following this, Fuertes travelled across much of the United States and to many countries in pursuit of birds, including the Bahamas, Jamaica, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, and Ethiopia. Fuertes collaborated with Frank Chapman, curator of the American Museum of Natural History, on many assignments including field research, background dioramas at the museum, and book illustrations. While on a collecting expedition with Chapman in Mexico, Fuertes discovered a species of oriole. Chapman named, Icterus fuertesi, commonly called Fuerte’s Oriole after his friend.

In 1904 he married Margaret F. Sumner and they had a son, Louis Sumner, and a daughter, Mary.

Fuertes lectured on ornithology at Cornell University from 1923. In 1926-27 he participated in the Chicago Field Museum/Daily News Abyssinian (Ethiopia) Expedition led by Wilfred Hudson Osgood. He produced some of his most exquisite bird and mammal watercolors as a result of this trip. On his return he visited Frank Chapman at Tannersville, New York. Returning from the meeting, his car was hit by a train at a rail-road crossing near Unadilla. A load of hay had concealed the oncoming train. His wife was seriously injured, but he died. The paintings he carried were however undamaged. This collection was later purchased from Mrs. Fuertes by C. Suydam Cutting.