22 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
but all the time, subconsciously, Fuertes’ 
mental photographic processes were mak- 
ing record after record. At the moment 
not a line would be drawn or a note 
written, but so indelibly and distinctly 
was what he had seen, etched on his 
memory that it could later be visualized 
as clearly and faithfully as though the 
original were before him. 
Fuertes’ bird portraits, like those of a 
great portrait painter of men, depict not 
only those externals which can be seen 
by any observant person, but they reveal 
character. Examine, for instance, the 
drawings of owls’ faces, or the sketches 
of toucans which are reproduced in this 
connection, and note how much in- 
dividuality is expressed in each drawing. 
These pictures are instinct 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 1874. 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 immediate recognition his work re- 
ceived permitted him to give rein to the 
naturalist’s longing to see the birds of 
other lands. 
In 1898 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 Harriman Expedition to 
Bering Sea, he had exceptional oppor- 
tunities to meet in life many boreal birds 
which had been studied by few, if any, 
bird artists. The reports of this ex- 
pedition contain some of the studies 
In 1901 he accom- 
panied a party of the Biological Survey 
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 
made on this trip. 
into western Texas. 
Museum’s expeditions, which during 
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 hundred specimens 
which are beautifully prepared and fully 
labeled 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 Museum expeditions, 
Fuertes has not only made sketches of 
the birds secured, but oil studies of the 
landscape selected as the panoramic 
background for the habitat group in 
which the birds were later to appear. 
In each instance these are accompanied 
by detailed color sketches of leaves and 
these years 
blossoms for the guidance of the pre- 
parator of the vegetation modeled for 
the group. Where birds appear in the 
background of the completed group, 
they are painted there by Fuertes him- 
self; and the landscapist who realizes 
his limitations gladly avails himself of 
this expert codperation. Thus we have 
in these groups (notably the flamingo 
