Martin Johnson Heade
Happy #InternationalMuseumDay!
The proverbial “calm before the storm” is perfectly depicted in this seascape painting by American artist Martin Johnson Heade. The scene is a study in contrasts: the illuminated foreground against the dark bay and skies, the calm water and seated figures compared with the churning clouds. It is still, yet the tension is palpable. Centered in the painting is the image of sailboat, a stark white triangle separating two vast ovals of darkness. It is caught between shores, between storm and safety.
Unlike the Hudson River School artists who portrayed the grandeur of nature via sweeping valleys and dramatic waterfalls, Heade’s landscapes are subdued and unromanticized. He favored painting coastal salt marshes of New England, often including haystacks. The interplay of light and atmosphere was his primary focus as seen in several paintings which depict threatening storms. Today’s painting is based on sketch Heade made after witnessing a storm on Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay around 1858. The sketch also became the basis for Thunder Storm on Narragansett Bay ten years later.
Throughout his life, Heade was fascinated with hummingbirds. He spent a year in Brazil where he painted over forty canvases of brilliantly colored hummingbirds in lush tropical landscapes. He planned to include the pictures in an elaborate book, The Gems of Brazil, but his vision was not realized. Nevertheless, Heade continued painting hummingbirds, often with orchids, which became his distinctive genre. (One such painting is archived in Daily Art).
Later in life, when he settled in Florida, Heade focused on still lifes of southern flowers, particularly magnolias. His 1890 painting, Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth, was featured on a U.S. postage stamp in 2004. Heade was a versatile painter with a long and prolific career, but was only moderately successful during his lifetime. Largely forgotten for decades after his death in 1904, he was rediscovered in the 1940s, and has since been recognized for his artistic achievements.
- Martina