Louis Agassiz Fuertes

Louis Agassiz Fuertes was an American ornithologist, illustrator and artist. He set new standards for ornithological art and is considered as one of the most prolific American bird artists after John James Audubon. He made thousands of bird paintings and sketches, based on studies in nature and details from fresh specimens, that illustrate a range of ornithological works. He died in a car accident near New York, shortly after returning from an expedition to Abyssinia. His name is commemorated in two species. One is a species described by Frank Chapman as Icterus fuertesi, although it is now considered a subspecies of the orchard oriole. The other, Fuertess parrot, or Hapalopsittaca fuertesi, was rediscovered in 2002 after 91 years of presumed extinction. He influenced several other wildlife artists after him, in addition to mentoring George Miksch Sutton. The Wilson Ornithological Society instituted an award in his memory in 1947.

Fuertes was born in Ithaca, New York, and was the son of Estevan and Mary Stone Perry Fuertes. His father came from a prominent Puerto Rican family, and was a professor of civil engineering at Cornell University, and for sometime dean of civil engineering. Estevan named his son after the Swissborn American naturalist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz . Fuertess mother, born in Troy, was of Dutch ancestry. Young Louis became interested in birds at very early age, securing birds with a slingshot and examining them carefully. As a child he had been influenced by Audubons Birds of America. At the age of fourteen, he made his first painting of a bird, a male red crossbill, from life. 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 comments on its rarity, and in 1891, when Louis was 17, he became an Associate Member of the American Ornithologists Union. He was encouraged by his fathers co

Source: Wikipedia