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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. |