Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904), Apple Blossoms in a Vase, 1867, oil on board, John Wilmerding Collection

Heade presents his bouquets theatrically. The Victorian vases wtih their sensuous shapes and distinctive styles evoke female forms, and the floral arrangements burst forth expressively, almost like soloists on a bare stage. This anthropomorphic quality becomes even more pronounced in Heade's paintings of orchids and magnolias of the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. The art historian John I.H. Baur once observed  that works like Heade's Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth, with their "fleshy whiteness," resemble "odalisques on a couch."