A CARVED AND PAINTED KINGFISHER,

Also known as "Bernier the Lumberman", Joseph Romauld Bernier was only known by his surname when Robert Bishop published American Folk Sculpture in 1974. Recent scholarship, including interviews with his descendants, revealed the carver's full name and life dates. Bernier was born in Canada in 1873 and moved to Biddeford, Maine in the 1890s to work as a lumberman. Upon the loss of the use of his legs in a lumber accident in the 1920s, Bernier began carving in the 1930s. For similar examples, see Robert Bishop, American Folk Sculpture, (New York, 1974), p. 173 and The Magazine Antiques (Summer 2010), pp. 70-72.