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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. Miniscule 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

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 45.5 x 91.1 cm (17 15/16 x 35 7/8 in.)

framed: 70.2 x 115.9 x 12.1 cm (27 5/8 x 45 5/8 x 4 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of the Avalon Foundation

Accession Number

1965.2.1

Artists / Makers

Martin Johnson Heade (artist) American, 1819 - 1904

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

lower left: M. J. Heade / 1864

Provenance

John H. Lidgerwood [d. 1956], Morristown, New Jersey;[1] (his estate sale, O. Rundle Gilbert, Morristown, New Jersey, 1956); (Victor Spark and Graham Galleries, New York); purchased 27 January 1965 by NGA.

[1] An undated note in NGA curatorial files from William P. Campbell states: "The Graham Galleries said NGA 1941 [former accession number for 1965.2.1] came `from a private home in New Jersey.'" When Heade's small oil entitled Harbor in Brazil was consigned to Sotheby's, New York, for auction, its owner informed the auction house that it had come from a house called "Speedwell" in Morristown and that the National Gallery's painting had been in the same collection (information provided by Dara Mitchell, American Paintings department, Sotheby's, in a telephone conversation; memorandum of 10 June 1992, in NGA curatorial files). See also American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture, Sotheby's, New York, 27 May 1992, no. 6. "Speedwell" was founded by Alfred Vail (1807-1859), who coinvented the telegraph with Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872); John H. Lidgerwood was Vail's grandnephew.

Associated Names

Gilbert, O. Rundle
Graham Gallery
Lidgerwood, John H.

Exhibition History

1969: In Memoriam, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1969, unnumbered checklist.

1971: The Beckoning Land, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 1971, 24, no. 31, repro. 67.

1980: American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1850-1875, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980, 116, fig. 121.

Technical Summary

The support is a coarse, medium-weight, plain-weave fabric with double-stranded threads in the vertical direction that has been lined. A white ground was applied thinly and evenly, and over this ground the paint layers range from fairly thin and fluid (as in the rocks of the foreground) to thickly impasted (as in the foam of the breaking waves). Brushstrokes are readily visible in some areas, such as the hills on both the left and the right, and completely blended in others, such as the surface of the sea. The sky was painted with glazes of warm colors over a pale grayish green base tone; some of its luminosity has been compromised by vertical streaking along the tops of the canvas threads. There is a tear in the bottom left quadrant and scattered small losses. In 1991 discolored varnish was removed. The varnish has become yellowed.

Bibliography

1969: Stebbins, Theodore E., Jr. Martin Johnson Heade. Exh. cat. University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, 1969: n.p., as Brazilian Seascape.

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 66, repro.

1975: Stebbins, Theodore E., Jr. The Life and Works of Martin Johnson Heade. New Haven and London, 1975: 87, 228-229, no. 85, repro.

1975: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: 559, no. 851, color repro.

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 172, repro.

1980: Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980: 94-95, no. 28, color repro.

1981: Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: 121, repro. 122.

1982: Mrozek, Donald J. "The American Idea of Recreation and the Changing Role of the National Park." Conspectus of History 1 (1982): 20, fig. 5.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 549, no. 832, color repro.

1988: Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 108, no. 31, color repro.

1992: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 197, repro.

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: 288-291, color repro.