Martin Johnson Heade

During a career that spanned almost seventy years, Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904), an ardent naturalist and traveler, painted a great variety of subjects: portraits, luminous salt marsh scenes, seascapes (often with thunder storms), tropical landscapes, hummingbird and orchid pictures, and floral still lifes. Heade had been fascinated by hummingbirds since his childhood, and from 1863 to 1864 he spent six months in Brazil with the intention of publishing a book illustrating hummingbirds-known as the gems of Brazil-in their natural habitat. Although the book was never published, the artist did complete some forty-five small paintings of hummingbirds. After two trips to Central America in 1866 and 1870, Heade began a distinctive group of works combining hummingbirds and tropical flowers. In Passion Flowers and Hummingbirds Heade depicted two snowcap hummingbirds, small black-and-white birds found in Panama, and the most brilliantly colored species of passionflower, Passiflora racemosa, in a steamy, lush jungle setting. In this work, Heade successfully combined his scientific interests and his aesthetic sensitivity.

Heade painted over one hundred fifty still lifes of Victorian vases with flowers, magnolia blossoms on velvet covered tabletops, and exotic orchids and passion flowers growing in the jungle. His still lifes of flowers in vases were also extensively exhibited during the late 1860s and 1870s.



This text was adapted from Davis, et al., MFA Highlights: American Painting (Boston, 2003).