Fuertes, Louis Agassiz

Fuertes, Louis Agassiz

(1874–1927) artist-naturalist; born in Ithaca, N.Y. He showed an affinity for painting birds in childhood, and after graduating from Cornell University (1897), he studied with the nature painter Abbott H. Thayer. A tireless field worker, he traveled all over the world collecting and sketching birds. His paintings appeared in such field guides as Coues' Key to North American Birds (1903) and Birds of New York (1910). During the 1920s, he lectured on ornithology at Cornell and designed habitat groups for New York's American Museum of Natural History.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.