Louis Agassiz Fuertes  -  con't

Growing up in Ithaca New York, Louis showed a keen interest in birds and the outdoors.  Louis and his sister Kippy (Mary Katharine) had a true love for wildlife. About 1888, when Louis was fourteen years old, he made his first painting of a bird from "the flesh," in his boyhood home in Ithaca, NY. It was a male Red Crossbill, the first he had ever seen. He followed the method that first suggested itself, and which he has followed ever since: he drew and painted it to the best of his power (Boynton 1956 and Peck 1982).

In November 1896, Dr. Elliott Coues introduced Fuertes (senior from Cornell) to the scientific community at the annual meeting of the American Ornithologists' Union in Cambridge, Mass. At the meeting, Abbott Thayer gave a lecture on the protective coloration of birds and mammals, where Fuertes then carried the discussion further by talking about the purpose of coloration in birds, particularly the vivid colors of many males (Marcham 1971). This topic was a paper he was currently writing for his thesis at Cornell University (Boynton 1956). In three days he won the attention, admiration, and affection of everyone he met (Peck 1982).

After graduating from Cornell, he studied art with Abbot H. Thayer, a person who would remain his friend throughout his life. Fuertes decided to concentrate on painting birds as a career after meeting Elliott Coues in 1894 while on a trip to Washington, D.C. with the Cornell University Glee Club. Elliot Coues, a leading ornithologist at the time would become a mentor for Louis. Fuertes traveled to many countries in pursuit of birds, including Canada, Mexico, Jamaica and Ethiopia. He accompanied E. H. Harriman (1899) on his famous exploration of the Alaska coastline. With W. H. Osgood, he made a scientific expedition (1926–27) to Ethiopia (formerly Abyssinia). 

The libraries at Cornell University hold extensive collections of his artwork and personal papers.

College sweethearts, Louis Agassiz Fuertes and Margaret (Madge) F. Sumner were married on June 2, 1904. They had two children, Mary and Sumner (Boynton 1956).

Fuertes was killed accidentally August 22, 1927, a few months after his return from his expedition to Ethiopia in Unadilla, New York, when the automobile he was driving was struck by a moving train (Osgood 1927 and Boynton 1956).

His paintings of birds appear in most of the leading American ornithological works published in the latter half of his lifetime. He is also known for his murals and for his habitat groups at the American Museum of Natural History. Fuertes created paintings and illustrations of birds for numerous books and magazines, including many children's books. Louis did a series of bird cards for Church and Dwight (Arm & Hammer) baking soda that were inserted into the product boxes, and which children enjoyed collecting.

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 and 1914), covering practically every species of eastern North America.