Martin Johnson Heade

American, 1819 - 1904

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American painter (1819-1904)

Explore Selected Works

Twigs of a magnolia tree with light green, glossy leaves and three cream-white blossoms lie on a sapphire-blue cloth in this horizontal still life painting. Brightly lit from our left, the blossoms and leaves nearly fill the composition, and the cut ends lie on the fabric to our right. The blue fabric cascades from the upper left and across the table or ledge. The three flowers are in various stages of bloom. The tightest bud is to our left, overlapped by a stem and the tender, unfurling leaves of a branch. The blossom next to it, at the center, is starting to open. The petals of the third blossom, to our right, splay open around the flower’s oval-shaped stamen. Light glints off the waxy leaves surrounding the flowers. The tawny-brown underside of one leaf is visible where it turns over, near the cut ends of the branches. Light shimmering on the fabric darkens from bright blue to our right, to deep royal blue in the shadows to the upper left, suggesting the fabric is velvet. The background is streaked with tan and pine green behind the fabric, and becomes nearly black in the shadows of the upper right corner and along the bottom edge. The artist signed the lower right corner, "MJ. Heade."
Martin Johnson Heade, Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth, c. 1890, oil on canvas, Gift of The Circle of the National Gallery of Art in Commemoration of its 10th Anniversary, 1996.14.1

Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth

Martin Johnson Heade · c. 1890 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1996.14.1

Against a distant, hazy, verdant forest, a petal-pink and amethyst-purple orchid grows from a mossy branch close to us, to our left, while three jewel-toned hummingbirds gather around a nest to our right in this horizontal painting. Two pale pink, ruffled petals of the orchid flare up and out from the hot-pink, furled center. The lip-like petal below is amethyst purple brushed with pale yellow along its top. Three narrow, pink petals create a triangle behind the center of the bloom. Some of the pale honeydew-green pods and leaves growing from the base of the plant are speckled with brown spots. The orchid grows on a gnarled brown branch painted with daubs of white, burnt orange, goldenrod yellow, and scarlet red along its length, which spans the width of the painting. Three hummingbirds with narrow, pointed beaks tend a nest built further along the branch to the right of the orchid. The largest is perched with its back to us. It has a vibrant green body and a two-pronged, crimson-red tail. Its head is turned up and to our left, looking at the second bird fluttering on a branch across the nest. The second bird’s avocado-green and dusty rose-pink body curves downward from outstretched wings. The third bird is perched on a nearby branch to our left, its head turned to the right to look at the others. Two white eggs are partially visible in the nest, which is shaped like an upside-down cone. The nest is woven with wavy, dangling strands of burnt-orange plant material. The orchid, birds, and nest fill the center of the composition. The scene is brightly lit from upper left. More leafy branches covered with hanging vines rise on either side of the painting. The background is filled with a dense growth of plants and trees, painted with blended shades of muted greens and pinks creating a diffuse, watery haze. The sky takes up the upper third of the composition and is filled with smoke-gray clouds except for a small circle of blue sky peeking through the branches of the tree in the upper right.
Martin Johnson Heade, Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds, 1871, oil on wood, Gift of The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, 1982.73.1

Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds

Martin Johnson Heade · 1871 · oil on wood ·  Accession ID  1982.73.1

Tall, billowing, lavender-purple and shell-pink clouds line the distant horizon over a vast plain of flat grassy land in this horizontal landscape painting. Closest to us to the lower left, a tree with a gnarled trunk and round, sage-green canopy sits mostly in shadow. A river curves from near the tree to cut across most of the landscape in a tight S-shape. One plump haystack, shaped like a giant teardrop, sits near a curve of the river in the vivid, lemon-lime field, to our left of center. One brown and one white cow graze across the river, to our right. Above tawny-brown hills lining the horizon, sunlight from our left turns the tops of the band of clouds pale pink, and the undersides are grayish-purple. The sky above is turquoise. The artist signed the lower right corner, “M J Heade.”
Martin Johnson Heade, Sunlight and Shadow: The Newbury Marshes, c. 1871/1875, oil on canvas, John Wilmerding Collection, 2010.74.1

Sunlight and Shadow: The Newbury Marshes

Martin Johnson Heade · c. 1871/1875 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2010.74.1

Martin Johnson Heade, View of Marshfield, c. 1866/1876, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase), 2015.19.173

View of Marshfield

Martin Johnson Heade · c. 1866/1876 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2015.19.173

Across a short stretch of sand in front of us, waves of bottle-green water break over two boulders on the shoreline, with sailboats in the water beyond, in this wide, horizontal painting. One boulder is at the left edge of the painting; the other is a short distance away, about a quarter of the way across. The water cascades down between those large rocks. Across the rest of the beach, the waves flare up to break toward us in white, foamy surf. The land curves back into view on both sides of the canvas with muted, sage-green hills and, to our left, dark green trees on more craggy boulders. A more distant finger of land to our left stretches nearly halfway across the horizon, which comes about halfway up the composition. Minuscule in scale there, smoke pours out of a chimney, which is surrounded by pale yellow buildings. A mound emerges from the horizon to our right of center. About ten sailboats float on the water. The closest one to us is near the center of the painting, and the tiny forms of people aboard can just barely be made out. The other boats become smaller as they move back to the horizon, and some are only a touch of white or gray on the canvas. White and pale lavender-purple clouds sweep up from the horizon into the sky, which glows butter yellow along the left edge. The sky cools to mint green in the upper right corner. Several white or brown birds fly across the sky or low over the water. The artist signed and dated the lower left, “M. J. Heade 1864.”
Martin Johnson Heade, Rio de Janeiro Bay, 1864, oil on canvas, Gift of the Avalon Foundation, 1965.2.1

Rio de Janeiro Bay

Martin Johnson Heade · 1864 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1965.2.1

Bibliography

1948

  • McIntyre, Robert G. Martin Johnson Heade. New York, 1948.

1969

  • Stebbins, Theodore E., Jr. Martin Johnson Heade. Exh. cat. University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, 1969.

1975

  • Stebbins, Theodore E., Jr. The Life and Works of Martin Johnson Heade. New Haven and London, 1975.

1996

  • Kelly, Franklin, with Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., Deborah Chotner, and John Davis. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 287-288.