"Martin Johnson Heade was born in 1819 in Lumberville, a small rural community near Doylestown, in Buck's County, Pennsylvania. He was the eldest son in the large family of Joseph Cowell Heed, the owner of a farm and a lumber mill. Heade's first lessons in art were provided locally by Edward Hicks and probably also by Thomas Hicks, Edward's cousin, a rudimentary instruction appare
...see more »ntly never replaced by more formal training. Nevertheless, Heade's artistic sophistication increased considerably within a short time, and around 1840, he took a study trip to England and Europe where he spent two years in Rome. A turning point in Heade's artistic career came after he 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. Views of New England and New Jersey, along with floral still lifes and recurring scenes of the tropics, dominated Heade's work from the early 1860s to the early 1880s, those years when he 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. In 1883, Heade married and moved to Saint Augustine, Florida where he continued to paint landscapes and flowers. In New York, he was virtually forgotten. His work, which was 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. Heade is associated with American luminism, particularly in his uniquely lit canvases of coming thunderstorms. He painted dramatic seascapes and landscapes of New England. In his nature studies, scientifically exact birds and plants are set against poetic backgrounds in eerie colors. His notable paintings include "Orchids and Hummingbirds" at Detroit Institute of Arts and "Approaching Storm: Beach near Newport" at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston."« see less
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