Alexis Jean Fournier
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Alexis Jean Fournier (July 4, 1865 – January 20, 1948) was an American artist. He is well known in
Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...
for his naturalistic paintings of
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and
St. Paul Paul, also named Saul of Tarsus, commonly known as Paul the Apostle and Saint Paul, was a Christian apostle ( AD) who spread the teachings of Jesus in the first-century world. For his contributions towards the New Testament, he is generally ...
landmarks, such as Farnham's Mill, which was one of the earliest mills established in Minneapolis. Fournier is also renowned beyond Minnesota as an important figure in the
Arts and Crafts movement The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America. Initiat ...
.


Early life

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota on July 4, 1865, Fournier was raised in
Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...
by French Canadian parents. In 1879, at the age of fourteen, Fournier moved to Minneapolis. Aspiring to be an artist, Fournier found work painting signs and stage scenery. Creating stage scenery gave him more time for his own painting and gave him experience painting panoramas, a popular nineteenth century art form. He began to experience modest success as a landscape painter. In 1886, Fournier attended a class at the newly established
Minneapolis School of Art The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) is a private college specializing in the visual arts and located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. MCAD currently enrolls approximately 800 students. MCAD is one of just a few major art schools to offer ...
. The school was directed by Boston artist Douglas Volk, and Fournier soon took private lessons with him. Under Volk's instruction, Fournier developed a more subtle sense of color and a brushier style. During the next three years, Fournier married his first wife Emma and had two children, Grace and Paul. He also began supporting his family as a full-time artist. He rented a studio above a tailor's shop at 412
Nicollet Avenue Nicollet Avenue ( ) is a major street in Minneapolis, Richfield, Minnesota, Richfield, Bloomington, Minnesota, Bloomington, and Burnsville, Minnesota, Burnsville in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It passes through a number of locally well-known ...
in Minneapolis.


Painting career

Fournier was invited to travel around the American Southwest with patron H. Jay Smith in 1891. After the trip, Fournier painted an acclaimed 50x12 foot panoramic mural that depicted stone dwellings in cliffs in the
Mesa Verde Mesa Verde National Park is a national park of the United States and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado, and the only World Heritage Site in Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Pueblo ...
region of Colorado that had been constructed by Ancient Puebloans. The panoramic was displayed at the 1893
Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was a world's fair held in Chicago from May 5 to October 31, 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The ce ...
in Chicago, where thousands of people saw the mural and heard Fournier interpret it publicly. Continuing to grow as an artist, in 1893, Fournier traveled to Paris, France, where he studied at the
Académie Julian The () was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907). The school was active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number and qual ...
. His trip was funded by several benefactors, including
James J. Hill James Jerome Hill (September 16, 1838 – May 29, 1916) was a Canadian-American railway director. He was the chief executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railway, which served a substantial area of the Upper Midwest ...
. In France, Fournier was strongly influenced by the Barbizon school, a group of nineteenth century French painters who were drawn to natural landscapes and romanticism. Between 1895 and 1901, Fournier made several more trips to Paris. In between, he returned to Minneapolis and continued painting Twin Cities landmarks. He also became associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, an arts revival emphasizing handmade crafts. Arts and Craft movement leader John Scott Bradstreet invited Fournier to paint murals in Twin Cities dining rooms that he was commissioned to decorate. Fournier's connection to the Arts and Crafts movement deepened in 1903 when he moved to
East Aurora, New York East Aurora is a village (New York), village in Erie County, New York, United States, southeast of Buffalo, New York, Buffalo. It lies in the eastern half of the town of Aurora, Erie County, New York, Aurora. The village population was 5,998 per ...
, home of the
Roycroft Roycroft was a reformist community of craft workers and artists which formed part of the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States. Elbert Hubbard founded the community in 1895, in the village of East Aurora, New York, near Buffalo. Part ...
arts community. The community started as a printing shop but evolved to include book art, pottery, metalwork, jewelry, and furniture. The community's leader, Elbert G. Hubbard, had been friends with Fournier for several years. Fournier's move to East Aurora came after Hubbard invited him to be the Roycroft community's permanent art director. Hubbard was a flamboyant man, and he traveled around the country giving lectures. Fournier, known for his charming personality and good humor, went with Hubbard on many of these trips. Fournier kept Hubbard company and exhibited his paintings at the lectures, bringing his work to a broader audience. Despite these travels and the many winters he spent in Minneapolis, Fournier was publicly identified with East Aurora and the Roycroft community. The Roycroft community changed in 1915 when Hubbard and his wife died aboard the ''
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'', an ocean liner that was famously torpedoed by Germans during
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. After his friend's passing, Fournier became close to a group of regional painters in
Brown County, Indiana Brown County is a county in south-central Indiana which in 2020 had a population of 15,475. The county seat (and only incorporated town) is Nashville. History The United States acquired the land from the Native Americans, part of which for ...
. He influenced their style, but they also influenced his. His paintings from Indiana were brighter and more impressionistic than his earlier work. Fournier's first wife died and he sold his home in Minneapolis in 1921. He moved to Indiana the next year, when he remarried a widow whose husband had been linked to the Brown County artists. He continued to spend summers in East Aurora. After the death of his second wife in 1937, he moved to East Aurora permanently, and in 1941 he married a third time. On January 16, 1948, at the age of eighty-two, Fournier slipped on an icy sidewalk near his home and sustained a fractured skull. Taken to Our Lady of Victory Hospital in Lackawanna, NY, he never regained consciousness and died four days later. The obituary's dateline is "Buffalo, Jan. 20." Through his landscape paintings and his role in the Arts and Crafts movement, Fournier made a lasting influence on American art. His obituaries revered him as "the last of the Barbizon painters", since his style and admiration for the natural world brought the Barbizon tradition well into the twentieth century. His paintings were exhibited around the world during his lifetime and continue to be displayed and collected.


Notes


References

*''Alexis Jean Fournier: A Barbizon in East Aurora''. Buffalo, NY: Burchfield Center, Western New York Forum for American Art, State University College at Buffalo, 1979. *Coen, Rena Neumann. ''Alexis Jean Fournier, the Last American Barbizon''. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1985. *''In the Mainstream: The Art of Alexis Jean Fournier (1865–1948)''. St. Cloud, MN: North Star Press, 1985. *Haselbauer, Ann. "Roycroft's Painter and His Photo Secessionist Son." ''Style'' 8, no. 1 (Feb. 1995): 31–33. *Smith, H. Jay.
The Cliff Dwellers
'. Chicago: H. Jay Smith Exploring Company, World's Columbian Exposition, 1893. {{DEFAULTSORT:Fournier, Alexis Jean 1865 births 1948 deaths Arts and Crafts movement artists Painters from Minnesota Artists from Saint Paul, Minnesota 19th-century American painters American male painters 20th-century American painters 19th-century American male artists 20th-century American male artists