Tim Spitzack

FACT...

His Heart in France. His Feet in America.

I was introduced to the art of Alexis Jean Fournier two months ago while lazily browsing through the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, seeking refuge from a cold winter’s day. Four of his oil paintings are displayed in a third floor gallery and I lingered over three that depict landscapes of cloudy days in the Mississippi River Valley in the late 1800s. I admired the way he used soft tones and the color white to bring brightness and contrast to the scenes.

Upon learning that he was born in St. Paul and is regarded as one of Minnesota’s first artists, I followed the breadcrumbs to the Minnesota Historical Society a few weeks later and got to know him while sifting through a box of his personal papers and hearing his voice through the trail of his pen.

Fournier was said to be a man who had his heart in France and his feet in America. He was born a Yankee Doodle Dandy – on Independence Day 1865 – and developed a deep appreciation for the beauty of the natural world while residing in the Mississippi River Valley. But his vagabond heart took him across the ocean seven times to capture the splendor of the French countryside. 

His love for France undoubtedly stemmed from the ancestry of his French Canadian parents. The family moved to Fond du Lac, Wis., the year after his birth, and young Alexis eventually moved to Milwaukee to attend parochial school. It was there he lived the life of a struggling artist, residing in an abandoned houseboat and working odd jobs. At age 14 he returned to the Mississippi River Valley and earned a modest living with his brushes and paints while working as a sign painter in Minneapolis. Two years later he parlayed his skills into slightly more creative work by painting stage scenery and murals. In 1886 he attended the Minneapolis School of Arts and started down a path that led him from commercial art to fine art, and to world acclaim.

His international star rose in 1894 when his painting “Spring Morning by Minnehaha Creek” was displayed in the Paris Salon exhibition. He would travel to France six more times by 1913 and make numerous paintings of that country’s landscapes. In 1907 he spent an entire summer painting the homes of 20 influential Realism painters from an artist colony in the village of Barbizon, near Paris. His style – subtle tones and colors, loose brushwork – was similar to those artists. He created an exhibit of those paintings entitled “Homes of the Men” and presented it in St. Paul, Minneapolis, Detroit, Chicago and Toledo. He was later memorialized as “the last of the Barbizon painters.”

In 1903 he moved to East Aurora, NY, to become artist-in-residence at the Roycroft Community, and five years later embarked on an adventure with lifelong friend Richard Le Gallienne, a British writer and poet. They hiked 300 miles from East Aurora to New York City “to observe the countryside in all its seasonal finery…and recording nature’s moods and changing scenes.” Gallienne wrote about the journey in his novella “October Vagabonds.” After reading the wonderful little book, I deduced he chose to immortalize the trip in fiction so he could inject his poetic and lyrical voice without being beholden to the factual constrains of a traditional travelogue. He shares his poetry throughout and gives snapshots of his companion creating art.

Of the papers preserved by the Minnesota Historical Society, nearly all of Fournier’s personal correspondence was in longhand, giving deeper insight into the man. For example, he penned a phrase in a letter, crossed it out and wrote above it “not important.” 

Art gallery brochures described him as easy-going, friendly and good-humored. He enjoyed practical jokes and “responded to a good joke by doubling up with laughter and whacking his thigh.” But he was also a self-disciplined artist who strove for growth and perfection, and he painted for the love of it. When he feared his style was becoming too routine he shunned his brushes and created paintings with a palette knife. In one sketchbook he wrote: “The man who tries to produce art for money only – never gets it.” It appears he got it.

Fournier loved to paint in spring and fall because of the colorful nuances of the seasons. He rarely painted in July or August. His standard outdoor painting attire might explain why – he always wore a coat and tie. 

While I appreciated discovering his art that day at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, I was more thrilled to later discover the inner thoughts of a man enraptured with the beauty of nature. In an 8-page letter describing an outing in Picardi, France, he wrote: “The air was close and warm…the cadence of the chorus of crickets and a quiet hum of insect life glimmering as they darted here and there in the warm brilliant sunlight and now and again Splat! came an innocent victim against my wet canvas and was made an unwilling martyr. There I stood at work under my white umbrella dressed as thinly as is possible, seeing, hearing, feeling, eh, tasting. My whole being wrapt in the scene. Being thankful to that Supreme Being that I was allowed to live and enjoy this the greatest joy I know of.”

Fournier, the father of two, died on Jan. 20, 1948 in East Aurora at 82. He was twice widowed, so he knew deep pain and loss. Yet he was still able to see the beauty around him and he found joy in sharing it with the world.