34 THE ®AEEDUBON: BUEE Hiss 
mand for good books of nature was growing. To say that Fuertes arrived 
opportunely to take advantage of the period does him injustice, for his 
influence was very powerful in stimulating and supporting the move- 
ment and but for him it would have been delayed or curtailed. Other 
artists and good ones came into the field, but it was Fuertes who set the 
standard, who inspired the ideal of all, and by abundant production 
spread broadcast the charm and beauty of birds, not merely in accuracy 
of line and color, but in the expression of subtle intangible qualities 
approaching spirituality. In effect the word went about that birds had 
souls and that Fuertes could see and transcribe them. 
For thirty years his activity and industry were phenomenal. He 
illustrated book after book, sometimes with only a frontispiece or a few 
plates, but usually with a whole series covering all the species known 
from a wide area. A large percentage of the more important bird 
books published in America during this period contain pictures by 
Fuertes. One of the most important was the series of large plates in 
full color for Eaton’s ‘“‘ Birds of New York”’ (1910) covering practically 
every species of eastern North America. At the time of his death he was 
under contract with the State of Massachusetts for a similar and even 
better set of plates, one volume of which had been finished and issued. 
He also furnished plates for various ornithological journals, for museum 
publications, for the National Geographic and other magazines, and for 
the widely distributed pamphlets and reports of the federal government. 
In all this, he was often under pressure, but his standard was high and 
the average quality of his production was never far from it. The demand 
for mere illustrations, however, prevented him from giving his talent 
the widest range. Had he lived, it was his well-determined intention to 
finish his contracts, to take no more which savored in the least of pot 
boiling, and to devote an entire year to untrammeled self-expression or, 
in his own words, “‘to paint whatever I want to paint, whether I can sell 
it or not’’—not merely birds, but pictures, pictures with birds in them. 
He had, in fact, painted such pictures before, but his opportunities in 
this direction had been all too limited. Acommission which he thoroughly 
enjoyed and in which he was signally successful was that of painting a 
series of twenty-five decorative panels in the private house of Mr. F. F. 
Brewster, New Haven, Connecticut. He also did some murals in the 
Flamingo Hotel, of Miami, Florida, and several large paintings for the 
collection in the Administration Building of the New York Zoological 
Society. His contributions to the backgrounds of the habitat groups of 
birds in the American Museum of Natural History were notable. In 
addition, he painted a certain number of mammals and domestic 
animals and, while some of these which he did not know in life were 
lacking in sympathy and below the standard of his pictures of wild 
birds, there were many of high quality, indicating that he might also 
have succeeded in this field. 
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