Martin Johnson Heade

Martin Johnson Heade was an American painter with an unusually wide range for his time. Born in Pennsylvania in 1819, he is best known today for two very different subjects, the wide salt marshes of the East Coast under dramatic skies, and small, jewel-like paintings of hummingbirds and tropical flowers made on trips to South America. Both show a careful eye and a love of glowing, layered light.

He never quite fit the main art movements of his day and traveled restlessly for much of his life before settling in Florida. His marsh scenes, with their haystacks and slow-moving storms, connect him to the Luminist painters, while his hummingbird pictures grew out of a genuine interest in natural history. Largely forgotten after his death, he was rediscovered in the twentieth century and is now highly prized.