Description:
landscape; mountains; Andes; tropical; Red-tailed Comet; hummingbird
Label Text:
In the nineteenth century, artists often aided scientists and industrialists by depicting “new” lands and resources and collecting and picturing plant and animal specimens. While Heade was interested in science and traveled to South and Central America in the 1860s and 1870s, his artistic vision took precedence. For example, Heade’s representation of male and female birds together is symbolic rather than a scene he would have likely observed in nature.
Heade remained an outsider to the art world for much of his life. He has since been applauded for his originality as a Romantic painter. His paintings defy the ideal of grand, majestic views like those by his friend Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900). Instead Heade’s paintings reflect his practice as an amateur naturalist and his skill at painting still life and landscape.
Lisa Crossman, 2020
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+1969.86.a |
