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| Keywords: MJ Heade Passion Flowers and Hummingbirds.jpg Passion Flowers and Hummingbirds Creator Martin Johnson Heade 1870 “83 oil canvas cm 39 37 54 93 Gallery 235 institution Museum of Fine Arts Boston 47 1138 During a career that spanned almost seventy years Heade an ardent naturalist and traveler painted a great variety of subjects portraits luminous salt marsh scenes seascapes often with thunder storms tropical landscapes hummingbird and orchid pictures and floral still lifes Heade had been fascinated by hummingbirds since his childhood and from 1863 to 1864 he spent six months in Brazil with the intention of publishing a book illustrating hummingbirds-known as the gems of Brazil-in their natural habitat Although the book was never published the artist did complete some forty-five small paintings of hummingbirds After two trips to Central America in 1866 and 1870 Heade began a distinctive group of works combining hummingbirds and tropical flowers These paintings were informed by a worldview recently revolutionized by Charles Darwin When supporting his theories about evolution in The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom 1876 Darwin specifically mentioned the adaptation of hummingbird beaks to fertilize passionflowers In Passion Flowers and Hummingbirds Heade depicted two snowcap hummingbirds small black-and-white birds found in Panama and the most brilliantly colored species of passionflower Passiflora racemosa in a steamy lush jungle setting The passionflower is so-named because missionaries saw correspondences between the parts of the flower and the Passion or sufferings of Christ For example the ten petals represent the ten apostles present at the crucifixion the corona filaments resemble the crown of thorns and the three stigmas relate to the nails In this work Heade successfully combined his scientific interests and his aesthetic sensitivity He rendered the birds and the passionflowers accurately in a close-up view but also gracefully composed the winding stems across the surface of the picture and contrasted the cool greens and grays with the dazzling red of the flowers Heade painted over one hundred fifty still lifes of Victorian vases with flowers magnolia blossoms on velvet covered tabletops and exotic orchids and passionflowers growing in the jungle One of his tabletop still lifes Flowers of Hope 1870 was the source of a chromolithograph by Louis Prang and was distributed widely through this medium His still lifes of flowers in vases were also extensively exhibited during the late 1860s and 1870s Although Heade was one of the first to reflect Darwin's theories in his paintings of flowers in their natural habitats other artists were subsequently affected by Darwin's view of the vitality of plants and the interaction of plants with their environment This text was adapted from Davis et al MFA Highlights American Painting Boston 2003 available at www mfashop com/mfa-publications html Museum of Fine Arts Lower left M J Heade object history Provenance <br>The artist With a Philadelphia dealer 1944 with Victor Spark New York; 1944 sold by Victor Spark to Maxim Karolik Newport R I ; 1947 gift of Maxim Karolik to the MFA Accession Date June 12 1947 credit line Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston Massachusetts http //www mfa org/collections/object/passion-flowers-and-hummingbirds-33015 Museum of Fine Arts Boston PD-old-100 Other versions http //zoom mfa org/fif sc7/sc70444 fpx obj iip 1 0 wid 2365 cvt jpeg Uploaded with UploadWizard 1870s paintings by Martin Johnson Heade American paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston Passiflora vitifolia Hummingbirds in art Oil paintings of flowers Oil paintings of birds Jungles in art Passifloras in art | ||||
