An Early Thaw, 1927 oil on canvas, Acquisition Fund Purchase

Alexis Fournier's family moved to Fond-du-lac, Wisconsin, when he was young.  In Wisconsin, he received his first art lessons from a local painter.  Though he had very little formal training, Fournier was selling landscapes by the age of sixteen.  Upon returning to Minneapolis, he studied with Douglas Volk, the first director of the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts (now Minneapolis College of Art and Design).  With the help of benefactors such as James J. Hill, Fournier studied at the Académie Julian in Paris.  In 1902, Fournier became an artist-in-residence at the Roycroft Arts and Crafts Colony in East Aurora, New York, where he was a major influence on its community of artisans and craftspeople.  Though known primarily as a painter in the French Barbizon style, his later works use loose brushstrokes reminiscent of the French Impressionism School, and he began to favor the technique of painting directly from nature.