The image is of a painting by American artist Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) entitled "Cattleya Orchid and Three Brazilian Hummingbirds" painted in 1871. You may see the original image as I found it on Carol Gerten's wonderful site (CGFA) here. Another splendid image of the painting (part of the permanent collection in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.) can be seen here. More of Heade's artwork can be seen on the Internet here and here.

Martin Johnson Heade was born in Lumberville, on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, on Aug. 11, 1819, the eldest son of Joseph C. Heed, farmer and lumber mill owner. He never trained formally as an artist but was guided & influenced by local preacher & artist Edward Hicks. Around 1840, he travelled to England & the Continent, and spent two years in Rome, Italy. By 1843, he was back in the United States but seemed thereafter to be constantly on the move, living in many cities in the eastern U.S. as far west as Chicago. He changed his name to Heade in 1843. He travelled internationally. In 1859 through 1863, living in New York and then in Boston, he developed his personal style of landscape painting for which he is now honoured. Heade had a life-long fascination with hummingbirds & in 1863/4 travelled to Brazil, with the intention of illustrating a book on South American hummingbirds to be entitled "Gems of Brazil" - to be published in Britain (never in fact published). He made three trips in all to South & Central America - to Brazil, Nicaragua, Columbia & Panama. Hummingbirds in tropical settings continued as a staple subject in his paintings for the remainder of his life. In 1883, at the age of 64, Heade married & moved to St. Augustine, Florida, where he died on Sep. 4, 1904.

While Heade exhibited widely, he achieved at best only moderate recognition. Little written documentation exists about him, & he left no identifiable body of writing. He was virtually forgotten until his work was rediscovered in the 1940s. He is today recognised as a major American artist & his art is praised for its sheer beauty, & its use of light, atmosphere and mood. I was interested to learn that two Heade paintings, part of the estate of Tucson resident Martha Nelson who died in 1996 at age 94, were sold for U.S. $88! Carl Rice bought them and later sold them through Christie's for U.S. $1,072,000! Wow! He was sued (on the basis that he was an art expert, knew the items were worth a substantial sum and concealed that fact from the seller) but the suit failed. In early 1999, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston paid U.S. $1.25 million for a Heade painting of magnolias arrayed on a velvet ground. For years the painting had been used to cover a hole in the wall of a house in Indiana! (I would like to be able to show you the painting, but cannot, alas). When this page was first created, the record price at auction for a Heade painting would seem to have been U.S. $1,650,000 ("The Great Florida Sunset" on May 25, 1988). But also see bottom of page!

The painting we display on this page is oil on wood & is 13 3/4 x 18 inches in size. In the bottom right is, I learn, a "Sappho Comet" hummingbird, green with a yellow throat & brilliant red tail feathers. The other two birds are green-and-pink "Brazilian Amethysts". A needlework pattern of the design used to be available .