Martin Johnson Heade Paintings

Gallery of Martin Johnson Heade Paintings for Sale

Oil Painting Supplies of 350 Famous Painters * Oil Painting Supplies of 150 Styles

Knowledge: Oil Painting * Acrylic Painting * Watercolor Painting * Gouache Painting * Asian Ink Art
Pastel Painting * Charcoal Drawing * Pencil Sketch * Wax Crayon Painting

Toperfect supply oil painting masterpiece reproductions of the Romantic flowers painter, you are welcome to send us your own Martin Johnson Heade work to copy.

The copyright of scripts in this website is owned by Toperfect. Toperfect reserves the manual scripts of original version. Toperfect will take appropriate legal action in the piracy and infringements of copyright.

Martin Johnson Heade Biography

American Hudson River School painter
born 1819 - died 1904

Also known as: Martin J. Heade.
Student of: Edward Hicks (1780-1849), Thomas Hicks (1823-1890)

HEADE, Martin Johnson, artist, born in Bucks county, Pa. Martin Johnson Heade began his career as a portrait-painter, studied in Italy, traveled in the west, and then settled in Boston as a landscape-painter. This brought him into relations with Rev. James C. Fletcher, who induced him to visit Brazil with a view to preparing an illustrated work on hum-ruing-birds. The difficulties then existing in properly chromo-lithographing his fine designs caused the abandonment of the painting, but the Martin Johnson Heade paintings were purchased by Sir Morton Peto and taken to London. The artist has painted many western and tropical scenes, also views on the Hudson and the Massachusetts coast, which are characterized by rich effects of color and light, and by poetic sentiment. His studio is in New York city. Among best-known Martin Johnson Heade paintings are "High Tide on the Marshes," " Nicaragua., .... Off the California Coast" (which was exhibited at the Centennial exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876), and "South American Scene." Martin Johnson Heade painter has recently sent to exhibitions of the Academy "On the St. John's River, Florida " (1885), and " Sunset, Florida" (1886).

"A turning point in his artistic career came after Martin Johnson Heade returned to New York in 1859 and rented quarters in the Tenth Street Studio Building. Proximity to so many landscape painters, especially Frederic Church, seems to have inspired him, for it signaled the beginning of his development of a personal style and sparked his lasting interest in the landscape's broad panorama and subtle atmospheric effects. Even though New York left an enduring mark on Martin Johnson Heade landscape painting and is the city to which the romantic painter was most closely bound, he seems not to have put down deep roots even there: Martin Johnson Heade painter never, for example, joined the National Academy of Design, not even as an Associate.

"In the years from 1861 to 1863, which Martin Johnson Heade spent in Boston, Heade interpreted the chaste coastal landscape in a manner uniquely his own. In the latter half of 1863, Martin Johnson Heade took a trip to Brazil and stayed on through March 1864. His purpose in going there was to illustrate a complete series of South American hummingbirds, which Martin Johnson Heade painter hoped to have published in Britain. Though he failed in that endeavor, hummingbirds in tropical settings continued as a staple subject in Martin Johnson Heade work. The flowers painter set out again for South America in 1866; four years later, he made a third trip.

Cattelya Orchid and Three Brazilian Hummingbirds

"Views of New England and New Jersey, along with floral still lifes and recurring scenes of the tropics, dominated Martin Johnson Heade work from the early 186os to the early 188os, those years when the romantic artist produced the landscapes for which he is most remembered today. Though their effect was often described as disquieting, with them Heade developed one of the best instincts in the Hudson River School for capturing nature's remote, fleeting beauty.

"Heade exhibited widely - at the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art, the American Art-Union, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Royal Academy in London - but achieved at best only moderate recognition. Little written documentation exists about him, and Martin Johnson Heade left no identifiable body of writing.

"In 1883, he married and moved to Saint Augustine, Florida, where Martin Johnson Heade painter continued to paint landscapes and flower pieces. In New York, the artist was virtually forgotten. Martin Johnson Heade paintings, which were rediscovered during the revival of interest in Hudson River School painting in the 1940s, has been increasingly appreciated in the intervening years and is today accorded major status."
- From "American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School".