Louis Agassiz Fuertes

Biography

Early life

Fuertes was born in Ithaca, New York, and was the son of Puerto Rican astronomer and civil engineer Estevan Fuertes and Mary Stone Perry Fuertes. His father was the founding professor of the School of Civil Engineering at Cornell University, and for many years served as the dean of the college. Estevan named his son after the Swiss-born American naturalist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, who had died the year before. Fuertes's mother, born in Troy, New York, was of Dutch ancestry.

Young Louis became interested in birds at a very early age, killing birds with a slingshot and examining them carefully.

As a child, he had been influenced by John James Audubon's The Birds of America. At the age of fourteen, he made his first painting of a live bird, a male red crossbill. He learned to keep careful records of the appearance, habits and voices of birds.

In 1890, he sent a specimen that he collected to the Smithsonian and received stellar praise and glowing comments on its rarity and accuracy and in 1891, at the age of 17, Louis became the youngest member ever named as an Associate Member of the American Ornithologists' Union.

He was encouraged by his father's colleagues at Cornell 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 des Plantes in Paris.

In September, he joined the Institute of Keller, a school in Zurich, staying on for a year.

Cornell University

Returning to the United States, he enrolled in Cornell in 1893, choosing to study architecture.

His older brother James, however shared in a memoir that Louis lacked a passion for geometry and mathematics and would often fall asleep when James tried to coach him. During one college lecture, Louis climbed out a classroom window and sat completely still in a tree to investigate a strange bird call he had never heard before.

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 meet his uncle Elliott Coues, who was also keenly interested in birds. This meeting was a turning point, as Coues recognized Fuertes' talent and spread the word about his already distinguished work. 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. He was also a member of Alpha Delta Phi which he joined having been lifelong friends with famed horticulturalist and naturalist Theodore Luqueer Mead, one of his father's former students and member of the fraternity.

In 1896, Coues invited Fuertes to attend the Ornithological Congress at Cambridge in England.

Career and personal life

After graduating from Cornell in 1897 he became an apprentice to the painter Abbott H. Thayer. In 1898, he made his first expedition, with Thayer and his son Gerald, to Florida. In 1899, Fuertes accompanied E. H. Harriman on his famous exploration of the Alaska coastline, the Harriman Alaska Expedition.

Fuertes later traveled 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 it Icterus fuertesi, commonly called Fuertes's oriole after his friend.

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

Fuertes regularly lectured on ornithology at Cornell University beginning in 1923. Fuertes was an able imitator of bird song and even made a trial recording for a Victor record in 1913.

In 1926–27 he participated in the Field Museum's Abyssinian Expedition led by Wilfred Hudson Osgood. He produced some of his most exquisite bird and mammal watercolors as a result of this trip.

Death

Upon his return from Ethiopia, Fuertes visited Frank Chapman at Tannersville, New York. Returning from the meeting, his car was hit by a train at a railroad crossing near Unadilla, New York, and he was killed. A load of hay had concealed the oncoming train. His wife was seriously injured but survived.

By a twist of fate, the paintings he carried all survived undamaged. This extraordinary and rare collection was later purchased from Mrs. Fuertes by C. Suydam Cutting.

Fuertes is buried at Lake View Cemetery in Ithaca, New York.