Artist Profile: Martin Johnson Heade – Painter, Botanist, Explorer.
Study of an Orchid, 1872
Martin Johnson Heade was an American painter who lived from 1819 to 1904. He was best known for his luminous still lifes of flowers, birds, and landscapes, particularly from his time in Brazil. Heade was relatively unknown during his lifetime but shot to fame and popularity, in the 20th century for this series of paintings inspired by plants and animal life in South America.
Martin Johnson Heade
Born: 11 August 1819, Lumberville, Pennsylvania, United States
Died: 4 September 1904, St. Augustine, Florida, United States
Style: Romanticism, Luminism
Education: Hudson River School
Heade was born in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, and grew up in rural New England. He showed an early talent for art and began his formal training when he was a teenager in the studio of Edward Hicks, a Quaker painter.
Orchids and Hummingbirds, c. 1875-90
Whether he knew it or not, the hummingbird is a symbol of intelligence, beauty, devotion, and love – he painted in great detail and often placed it in the context of lush tropical foliage. These paintings embrace all of these themes as well as the eeriness and power that the jungle holds.
Heade was known for his romantic and poetic sensibility, and the hummingbirds provided him with a way to express these themes in his paintings.
Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds, 1871
Martin Johnson Heade, portrait c. 1860
Heade's style was and is still to this day known for its luminosity, attention to detail, and use of bold colours. His still lifes often feature exotic flowers and fruits, while his landscapes capture the beauty of the American countryside. Heade also had a fascination with the hummingbird, which is likely to be developed during his travel through South America.
Heade travelled extensively through Brazil in the 1860s where he documented plant life, particularly the orchid that would accompany the symbol of the hummingbird in most of these botanical landscapes.
Orchids and Hummingbird c. 1860
Heade's attention to detail was remarkable, and show how his training influenced his work later in life. Though not labelled specifically as a botanist he was an avid amateur naturalist who had a deep interest in the natural world. He would often include accurate depictions of the plants and insects that the birds would encounter in their natural habitats.
Two Fighting Hummingbirds with Two Orchids c. 1860
Unfortunately, Heade’s work was mostly overlooked by critics when he was alive and he struggled to sell most of his work. His work was largely forgotten for several decades after his death. It wasn’t until the 1940s & 50s that his work began to receive the recognition and praise that it deserved from curators and historians, as popularity in still lifes of the American landscape came into fashion.
Heade continued to paint throughout his life, even as his style evolved and changed. Heade died in Florida in 1904.
In recent years, again, his paintings have been discovered and recognised for their beauty and importance through documentation of the natural world. His interest in botany and plant life and dedication to scientific detail helped to make his paintings some of the most celebrated depictions of tropical flora and fauna in American art.
