American Iconoclast
February 2001
Today, looking at Martin Johnson Heade’s tranquil marsh scenes, dramatic coastal views, lush hummingbird and tropical flower images, and glowing magnolia portraits, it is hard to grasp why this gifted, versatile and prolific artist was overlooked for so many years. During a long and peripatetic career, Heade (1819–1904) constantly reinvented himself, producing perhaps the most varied body of work of any 19th-century American painter. His depictions of Latin American birds, flora and landscapes are among the most unusual and increasingly admired masterpieces in our art history.
Clearly a superb technician who painted offbeat subjects in unconventional ways, Heade was considered a minor artist in his lifetime and was all but forgotten after his death. To a large degree, Heade was his own worst enemy in terms of reputation and sales during his lifetime. A cantankerous individualist, he argued and fought with wealthy people who might have become patrons. A modernist thinker ahead of his time, he preceded Claude Monet in creating series of the same scenes—and never repeated himself. These factors helped set Heade apart from more successful colleagues, and although he exhibited widely, his works sold for small sums, earning him a modest living.
A Pennsylvania farm boy, Heade grew up in Bucks County, where he received early artistic training under Quaker minister Edward Hicks of “Peaceable Kingdom” fame. Arriving in New York in his early twenties, Heade was befriended by Frederic E. Church and other stalwarts of the Hudson River School and soon began to create rather conventional landscapes, still lifes and portraits.
Undoubtedly stimulated by admiration for John James Audubon’s celebrated bird portraits and inspired by his friend Church’s enormous success with ambitious landscapes of South America, notably “The Heart of the Andes,” 1859, Heade made three pilgrimages to the region in the 1860s. He first traveled to Brazil in 1863 to paint hummingbirds, tiny colorful species for which he retained a lifelong affection.
Prodded by Emperor Dom Pedro II, whom he met, the artist-naturalist also became fascinated with the country’s dramatic scenery and tropical vegetation. His topographically accurate, Church-like “Sunset Harbor at Rio,” 1864, features awesome mountains surrounding the large, glistening body of water. “Brazilian Forest,” 1864, evoking the nation’s dank, dense, tree-tangled rain forest, includes a tiny crouching hunter and dog, reflecting Heade’s avid interest in hunting.
Highlighting Heade’s six-month Brazilian stay were his studies and sketches of a variety of jewel-like hummingbirds in their natural settings, prepared with an eye for publishing a book of chromolithographs to be called The Gems of Brazil. It was to be similar to Audubon’s monumental Birds of America.
However, when Heade sought to carry out his project in London, where Audubon’s masterpiece was produced, he was unable to line up the 200 subscribers necessary to print the expensive book and was apparently dissatisfied with the quality of the proposed chromolithographs.
In all, Heade executed nearly 50 paintings of 20 different species for the book project. Combining elements of landscape and still life with biological and ornithological accuracy, each measures about 12 inches by 10 inches and features a male and female hummingbird near a nest, against a landscape background.
Sixteen of these exquisite vignettes, framed in groups of four, are in the Manoogian Collection. Among the most spectacular are “Hooded Visorbearer,” circa 1864–65, and “Two Sun Gems on a Branch,” circa 1864–65. “Ruby Throat of North America,” 1865, was painted somewhat later. In each, Heade beautifully captured the brilliant iridescent quality of the colorful plumage of the birds, shown in characteristic poses amidst the lush foliage of their natural habitats.
After a brief visit to Nicaragua in 1866, Heade made a final, four-month trip to Latin America in 1870, visiting Colombia, Panama and Jamaica. Building on his Gems of Brazil idea, he created another series of inventive, even larger and more complex compositions depicting his beloved hummingbirds amid dramatically enlarged, brilliantly colored tropical flowers in misty, expansive tropical settings. There is nothing quite like these works, such as “Passion Flowers and Hummingbirds,” circa 1870–83, which meld still lifes with grand landscapes.
Equally striking and glowing with jewel-like elegance are the more than 50 hummingbird-and-orchid paintings, triggered by his last South American visit, that Heade created between 1871 and 1902. Overflowing with sensuality and emotion, these unique compositions feature vivid, enlarged blooms and delicate birds, set against dramatic, mountainous backdrops. “[T]here are quite simply no other paintings like these in America or elsewhere,” says preeminent Heade authority Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr.
Outstanding examples include “Cattleya Orchid and Three Brazilian Hummingbirds,” 1871, “Orchid with Two Hummingbirds,” 1871, “Orchid and Hummingbird,” c. 1875–83, and “An Amethyst Hummingbird with a White Orchid,” c. 1875–90. Another work in this group, “Two Orchids in a Mountain Landscape,” painted in the early 1870s, fetched $937,500 at auction in May 1999, reflecting the large prices Heade’s art commands nowadays. All are knockouts.
Settling in his first and final permanent residence in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1883, Heade was commissioned by railroad and hotel tycoon Henry Flagler to paint his last great tropical landscape for Flagler’s new Hotel Ponce de Leon. “View from Fern-Tree Walk, Jamaica,” 1887, is an expansive panorama even Church might have envied. In his final years in Florida, Heade also turned out the wonderfully sensuous magnolia still lifes that are so admired today.
Driven by wanderlust, difficult and gifted, Martin Johnson Heade bequeathed to posterity works of quiet, abiding beauty, none more so than those immortalizing the dainty hummingbirds, exotic flowers and dramatic vistas of Latin America. As appreciation for these quiet gems of American art grows, so too will Heade’s reputation as one of our finest 19th-century artists.