Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth

c. 1890

Martin Johnson Heade

Painter, American, 1819 - 1904

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."

Media Options

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Heade was the only major American artist of the 19th century to make important contributions in landscape, marine, and still life painting. Virtually all of his still lifes were floral pieces, starting with simple pictures of flowers in vases in the early 1860s and culminating with a splendid series of roses, magnolias, and other flowers spread out on tables covered with velvet cloths. This painting, a prime and much – admired example from the latter series, is considered one of the finest still lifes of Heade's entire career. [1]

In 1883, after a lifetime of restless, uneasy personal relationships, and only modest critical and popular success as an artist in the northeast, Heade married for the first time and settled permanently in Saint Augustine, Florida. There he found his first and only important patron, the oil and railroad magnate Henry Morrison Flagler, who would purchase the artist's works regularly during the 1880s and 1890s. At the age of 64 Heade had at last found personal and professional stability, and the renewed energy and interest in painting evident in his late still lifes, especially the magnolias, may have been inspired by these new circumstances. [2] Certainly works such as Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth, with their striking contrasts of brilliantly lit flowers and leaves set against a dark background, are among the most original still lifes of the 19th century. They are also for many observers strongly sensual, their lush colors, full, curving contours, overall sense of opulence, and implied perfumed scent of the flowers suggestive, perhaps, of female nudes languidly reclining on luxurious couches. [3]

(Text by Franklin Kelly, published in the National Gallery of Art exhibition catalogue, Art for the Nation, 2000)

More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I, pages 295-298, which is available as a free PDF at https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/american-paintings-19th-century-part-1.pdf

Notes1. The inclusion of Giant Magnolias as one of five paintings by Heade in the exhibition A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting, 1760 – 1910, shown in Boston, Washington, and Paris in 1983 – 1984, is evidence of the high place it is accorded in Heade's oeuvre.

2. A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting, 1760 – 1910 [exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts] (Boston, 1983), 282.

3. Boston 1983, 282.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 69-A


Artwork overview


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Victor D. Spark, New York), 1962-c. 1965; Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Finkelstein, New York, c. 1965-1995; by descent to private collection; consigned 1995 to (Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York); sold 6 February 1996 to NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1964

  • American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1964, no. 45, as Giant Magnolias.

1968

  • The American Vision: Paintings 1825-1875, M. Knoedler and Co., Inc., New York, 1968, no. 43.

1969

  • Martin Johnson Heade, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1969, no. 52.

1976

  • The Natural Paradise: Painting in America, 1800-1950, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1976, repro. 140.

1983

  • A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting, 1760-1910, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Grand Palais, Paris, 1983-1984, no. 68.

1999

  • Martin Johnson Heade, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1999-2000, no. 71, repro.

2000

  • Art for the Nation: Collecting for a New Century, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2000-2001, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

1975

  • Stebbins, Theodore E., Jr. The Life and Works of Martin Johnson Heade. New Haven and London, 1975: 174-176, 276, no. 328.

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: 295-298, color repro.

1999

  • Martin Johnson Heade. Exh. cat. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1999-2000: no. 71.

2004

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 313, no. 254, color repro.

Inscriptions

lower right: MJ. Heade

Wikidata ID

Q5558386


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