Martin Johnson Heade

He studied with Edward Hicks, and possibly with Thomas Hicks. His earliest works were produced during the 1840s and were chiefly portraits. He travelled to Europe several times as a young man, became an itinerant artist on American shores, and exhibited in Philadelphia in 1841 and New York in 1843. Friendships with artists of the Hudson River School led to an interest in landscape art. In 1863, he planned to publish a volume of Brazilian hummingbirds and tropical flowers, but the project was eventually abandoned. He travelled to the tropics several times thereafter, and continued to paint birds and flowers. Heade married in 1883 and moved to St. His chief works from this period were Floridian landscapes and flowers, particularly magnolias laid upon velvet cloth. His best known works are depictions of light and shadow upon the salt marshes of New England. Heade was not a widely known artist during his lifetime, but his work attracted the notice of scholars, art historians, and collectors during the 1940s. He quickly became recognized as a major American artist. Although he was often considered a Hudson River School artist, some critics and scholars take exception to this categorization. Heade's works are now in major museums and collections. His paintings are occasionally discovered in unlikely places such as garage sales and flea markets.

The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is painting. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are marine and landscape. Frederic Edwin Church is recorded as an influence. Residence is recorded at New York and Brazil. Works named in the authority record are Sunset, Haywagon in the Distance and Sunset: A Scene in Brazil. Work by Martin Johnson Heade is recorded in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Currier Museum of Art. Distinctions recorded are Florida Artists Hall of Fame.

• Born — 11 August 1819 • Birthplace — Lumberville, Pennsylvania, U.S. • Died — 4 September 1904 • Place of death — St. Augustine, Florida, U.S. • Known for — Painting, landscape art, still life • Movement — Hudson River School (occasionally disputed); Luminism • Notable Works — Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds; Sunlight and Shadow: The Newbury Marshes; Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth • Patrons — Henry Morrison Flagler

Heade was born in 1819 and was raised in Lumberville, Pennsylvania. Lumberville was a small hamlet, along the Delaware River in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Until the mid-1850s, his family ran what is now called the Lumberville Store and Post Office, the village's sole general store. The family spelling of the name was Heed. Heade received his first art training from the folk artist Edward Hicks, who lived in nearby Newtown, and possibly also from Edward's cousin, Thomas Hicks. Heade was painting by 1839; his earliest known work is a portrait from that year. He traveled abroad and lived in Rome for two years. He first exhibited his work in 1841, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and again in 1843 at the National Academy of Design in New York. Heade began exhibiting regularly in 1848, after another trip to Europe, and became an itinerant artist until he settled in New York in 1859.

• Illustration — Singing Beach, Manchester, Massachusetts, 1862 • Illustration — Approaching Thunder Storm, Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, 1859, Metropolitan Museum of Art Around 1857 Heade became interested in landscape painting, partly by meeting the established artists John Frederick Kensett and Benjamin Champney in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Heade moved to New York City and took a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building, which housed many of the famous Hudson River School artists of the time, such as Albert Bierstadt, Sanford Gifford, and Frederic Edwin Church. He became socially and professionally acquainted with them, and struck up a particularly close friendship with Church. Landscapes would ultimately form a third of Heade's total oeuvre.

• Illustration — Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds, 1871 Heade's interest in the tropics was piqued at least partly by the impact of Church's monumental painting Heart of the Andes (1859), now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Heade travelled in Brazil from 1863 to 1864, where he painted an extensive series of small works, eventually numbering over forty, depicting hummingbirds. He intended the series for a planned book titled "The Gems of Brazil", but the book was never published due to financial difficulty and Heade's concerns about the quality of the reproductions. Heade nevertheless returned to the tropics twice, in 1866 journeying to Nicaragua, and in 1870 to Colombia, Panama, and Jamaica. He continued to paint romantic works of tropical birds and lush foliage into his late career.

• Illustration — Sunlight and Shadow: The Newbury Marshes, 1871–1875 Heade's primary interest in landscape, and the works for which he is perhaps best known today, was the New England coastal salt marsh. Contrary to typical Hudson River School displays of scenic mountains, valleys, and waterfalls, Heade's marsh landscapes avoided depictions of grandeur. They focused instead on the horizontal expanse of subdued scenery, and employed repeating motifs that included small haystacks and diminutive figures. Heade also concentrated on the depiction of light and atmosphere in his marsh scenes. These and similar works have led some historians to characterize Heade as a Luminist painter. In 1883 Heade moved to Saint Augustine, Florida and took as his primary landscape subject the surrounding subtropical marshland.

• Illustration — Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth, 1890 Heade married and moved to St. Augustine, Florida in 1883. He remained there and continued to paint until his death in 1904. During his later years in St. Augustine, Heade painted numerous still lifes of southern flowers, especially magnolia blossoms laid on velvet. This was a continuation of an interest in still life that Heade had developed since the 1860s. His earlier works in this genre typically depict a display of flowers arranged in an ornate vase of small or medium size on a cloth-covered table. Heade was the only 19th-century American artist to create such an extensive body of work in both still life and landscape. Heade died in St. Augustine in 1904.

Theodore Stebbins, Jr., now curator of American art at the Harvard University Art Museums, writes, "...one of the things that has always made the study of Heade's work exciting is the way his paintings continue to turn up in garage sales and other unlikely places all over the country, in a manner that the paintings of Frederic E. Church and John F. Kensett do not." Stebbins speculates the reason for this was Heade's popularity with middle-class buyers, and his willingness to distribute his works widely across the country. Among the more notable of Heade's discoveries are: • Thunderstorm on Narragansett Bay, now in the collection of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, was originally discovered in an antiques store in Larchmont, New York, in 1943 by NYC art dealer Victor Spark. • Magnolia Blossoms on Blue Velvet and Cherokee Roses, now in private collections, were purchased at an estate sale in Arizona for $60 in 1996. They sold at Christie's auction house later that year for $937,500 and $134,500 respectively. • Two Magnolias on Blue Plush was originally purchased for $29 at a rummage sale by a Wisconsin man in 1989. It sold at Christie's auction house in 1999 for $882,500. It is now in the collection of James W. McGlothlin of Bristol, Virginia. • Magnolias on Gold Velvet Cloth was used to cover a hole in the wall of an Indiana resident for years. The owner became curious about the value of the painting after playing an art-related board game, and verified its authenticity with a New York art gallery. The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston purchased the work for $1,250,000 in 1999. • An unnamed Heade salt marsh landscape now titled "River Scene" was discovered in the attic of a Boston-area resident in 2003. It sold at a local auction house to an art dealer for $1,006,250 and was featured on the PBS television show, "Find!". It was purchased by a private collector, and is now on view at the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. • In 2004 a Florida woman was informed of the Heade discovery featured on "Find!" by her son, and inquired about a small 6 by 12 inch landscape that had hung in her living room. The painting, which her late husband had purchased for several dollars in St. Augustine in the 1970s, was authenticated as a late Heade marsh landscape. It sold at auction to an art dealer for $218,500. • A painting was found in a Massachusetts attic in 2006 and consigned to a local auction in Fall River. The painting was authenticated by Dr. Theodore Stebbins, Jr. as a Heade, having been painted between 1883 and 1890 in St. Augustine, Florida. It sold for $198,000 on November 22, 2006.

On the other hand, an unknown number of Heade's were faked. In 2012, Ken Perenyi (born 1947) disclosed in his book, Caveat Emptor how he forged numerous works purporting to be by Heade and other American masters. He avoided prosecution because he published his book after the statute of limitations had elapsed.

• Illustration — Portrait of a Man, 1840, Boston Museum of Fine Arts • Illustration — Rocks in New England, 1855, Boston Museum of Fine Arts • Illustration — Mary Rebecca Clark, 1857, Boston Museum of Fine Arts • Illustration — Rhode Island Landscape, 1859, Boston Museum of Fine Arts • Illustration — Approaching Thunder Storm, 1859, Metropolitan Museum of Art • Illustration — Seascape: Sunset, 1861, Detroit Institute of Arts • Illustration — Singing Beach, Manchester, 1862, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum • Illustration — Singing Beach, Manchester, Machassusetts, 1863, de Young (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco) • Illustration — Hunters Resting, 1863, Boston Museum of Fine Art • Illustration — A Vase of Corn Lilies and Heliotrope, 1863, Saint Louis Art Museum • Illustration — Sunset, Newburyport Meadows, 1863, Saint Louis Art Museum • Illustration — Sudden Showers, Newbury Marshes, c. 1865–1875, Yale University Art Gallery • Illustration — The Marshes at Rhode Island, 1866, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum • Illustration — Thunder Storm on Narragansett Bay, 1868, Amon Carter Museum of American Art • Illustration — Sunrise in Nicaragua, 1869, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum • Illustration — Passion Flowers with Hummingbirds, c. 1870–1883, Boston Museum of Fine Arts • Illustration — Orchid and Hummingbirds near a Mountain Lake, c. 1870–1890, McMullen Museum of Art • Illustration — Orchid with Two Hummingbirds, 1871, Reynolda House Museum of American Art • Illustration — Jersey Marshes, 1874, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum • Illustration — Orchids and Hummingbirds, c. 1875–1890, Private collection • Illustration — Orchids and Spray Orchids with Hummingbird, c. 1875–1890, Boston Museum of Fine Arts • Illustration — Orchid, Passion Flowers and Hummingbird, 1880, Private collection • Illustration — Orchid and Hummingbird, 1885, de Young (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco) • Illustration — On the San Sebastian River, Florida, c. 1883–1890, Greenville County Museum of Art • Illustration — Magnolia Grandiflora, c. 1885–1895, Boston Museum of Fine Arts • Illustration — Florida River Scene: Early Evening, After Sunset, c. 1887–1900, Gilcrease Museum • Illustration — The Magnolia Blossom, 1888, Timken Museum of Art • Illustration — Sunset Over the Marshes, c. 1890–1904, Boston Museum of Fine Arts • Illustration — Orchid and Hummingbird near a Mountain Waterfall, 1902, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum • Illustration — Blue Morpho Butterfly, Date unknown, Manoogian Collection