on Louis Agassiz Fuertes—Painter of Bird Portraits. 241


stinct with life, and differ from the work of the inexperienced or

unsympathetic artist as a living bird differs from a stuffed one.


Fuertes was born at Ithaca, where he now lives, in 1S74.

In 1897 he was graduated from Cornell, of which his father was

director of the College of Civil Engineering. Drawing birds was

with him as natural an outward evidence of an inward condition as

with most children spinning tops is an expression of an inherent love

of play. Before his graduation, he had made the illustrations for

Florence Merriam Bailey’s Birding on a Bronco, and Mabel Osgood

Wright’s and Elliot Coues’ Citizen Bird.


It was the encouragement he received from Coues that led

him definitely to decide to become a painter of birds, and the imme¬

diate recognition his work received permitted him to give rein to the

naturalists’ longing to see the birds of other lands.


In 189S therefore he went, with Abbott H. Thayer, under

whom he was studying, Gerald Thayer and Charles R. Knight, to

Florida. The following year, as a member of the Harraman Ex¬

pedition to Bering Sea, he had exceptional opportunities to meet in

life many boreal birds which had been studied by few, if any, bird

artists. The reports of this expedition contain some of the studies

made on this trip. In 1901 he accompanied a party of the Biological

Survey into western Texas. In 1903 he studied in California and

Nevada: in 1904 in Jamaica; and in 1909 in the Gulf of St.

Lawrence.


In 1902, 1907, 1908-11 and 1913, Fuertes acted as artist to

the American Museum’s expeditions, which during these years made

field studies and gathered material for habitat groups in the Museum

from the Bahamas, Florida, Saskatchewan and Alberta, Yucatan,

Mexico and Colombia.


On these expeditions he has collected about thirty-five hun¬

dred specimens, which are beautifully prepared and fully labelled

with data of special value to the artist, when necessary. These

data are in the shape of color sketches of bill, feet, eyes, or other

unfeathered areas, the colors of which disappear after death. Such

studies can be obtained only from the living or freshly captured

bird, and Fuertes’ collection of them is unique.


As the artist of American Museum expeditions, Fuertes has



