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Heade, Martin Johnson |
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Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904)
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| Birth Place |
Lumbersville, Pennsylvania |
| Death Place |
St. Augustine, Florida |
| Born |
Aug. 11, 1819 |
| Died |
Sep. 4, 1904 |
| General Notes |
Born in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, Martin Johnson Heade was largely self-taught, though when he was a young man he took lessons from his neighbor, the Quaker artist Edward Hicks (1780-1849). He began as a portrait painter, but through his travels he gained exposure to other art forms. In New York City in 1859 he had the good fortune to find quarters in the famous Tenth Street Studio building and there befriended the eminent landscape painter Frederic Church. His work clearly shows, however, that Heade was an artist of uncommon vision who did not follow the mainstream. On both the East and West Coasts of this country, he painted the sea in its various moods. In South America, he studied exotic flora and hummingbirds; in coastal lowlands from New England to Florida, he painted the mysterious salt marshes. In 1885 he moved to St. Augustine, Florida, and only then did he win the support of a devoted patron in Henry Morrison Flagler. Heade's highly original art was unpopular with the critics during his lifetime and was overlooked until the mid-twentieth century. While other American painters went to South America to paint the magnificent Andes of Ecuador, Martin Johnson Heade was drawn to that continent by something else altogether: his consuming desire to see and study hummingbirds. His plan to prepare an illustrated book on hummingbirds may have been spurred by his New York friend and patron John Russell Bartlett, a book publisher with a fascination for science and exploration whom Heade had known since the late 1850s. Unfortunately, Heade's proposed work, The Gems of Brazil, was never published. But his desire to document the birds was unquenchable. Between 1864 and 1870 he made three trips to Central and South America in his quest to record them. Heade was a serious student of nature, and from 1880 onward he published numerous articles on all manner of wildlife and sporting activities in Forest and Stream. Not surprisingly, his last piece, published just weeks before his death on September 4, 1904, was devoted to hummingbirds. |
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