Thorntails, Brazil was painted by Martin Johnson Heade, one of the great landscape painters of 19th century America. In his many paintings of hummingbirds placed against a South American landscape, the artist creates small gem-like paintings of his exotic subject matter. Martin Johnson Heade was born in 1819 in Lumberville, Pennsylvania. As a young man he studied with Edward Hicks (the artist of the many charming versions of The Peaceable Kingdom) and travelled to Europe to further his art studies. During these early years Heade concentrated on portraits and genre paintings (scenes of every day life) and also began producing landscape paintings. However, it was during the 1860's that Heade truly developed as an artist. In the early 1860s Heade began to paint his Luminist scenes of haying in the marshes in Massachusetts and later in Rhode Island and New Jersey. In these landscapes Heade captures the stillness of the low, flat marsh land and the effects of the changing light upon this scene. Popular in his own day, these works are now seen as unique and powerful evocations of the American land. Also during the 1860s Heade travelled to South America and began to create his paintings of hummingbirds which are considered the second great aspect of his oeuvre. In 1883 Heade married and moved to St. Augustine, Florida. There he continued to paint landscapes, hummingbirds and orchid scenes and floral still lifes until his death in 1904.

Heade made three trips to South America: 1863-64 to Brazil, 1866 to Nicaragua and 1870 to Columbia, Panama and Jamaica. Exactly why he decided to go to South America is uncertain. We are sure, however, that Heade went to Brazil in 1863 with the intent of creating a series of paintings which would provide the basis for a book entitled Gems of Brazil, to chronicle the hummingbirds of that country. Heade was fascinated by hummingbirds; he recalled that "from early boyhood, I have been almost monomaniac about hummingbirds." Indeed, in one of his many letters to the magazine Forest and Stream, Heade in 1904 noted that he had raised and tamed hummingbirds for more than fifty years. In one letter to the magazine he proudly recounted that his tame hummingbird would perch on his finger and feed from a small bottle held by Heade's wife.

We know that Heade finished 12 of the projected 20 paintings in the Gems of Brazil series for he exhibited these paintings in Rio de Janeiro. The idea of publishing a handsome, large volume on animals and birds in wildlife settings was not new. In the early 19th century John James Audubon's prints of birds and mammals in America, for example, were published. Indeed there were several books dealing solely with hummingbirds in print, the most notable of which was a multi-volumed work published in 1849-61 by John Gould. Heade's willingness to attempt Gems of Brazil so soon after the appearance of Gould's work speaks strongly of Heade's deep interest in hummingbirds and his confidence in his ability to depict them. Sadly, the Gems of Brazil was never published. Again, the reasons for this decision are not clear. One source suggests that Heade was never satisfied with the quality of the lithographs which were produced from his paintings for the book and so abandoned the idea.

According to Theodore Stebbins, the leading scholar on Heade and his work, the Hunter's Thorntails, Brazil "relates very closely to the Gems, but it is impossible to tell at this point whether it is one of the original . . . Gems or not." Thorntails, Brazil is certainly close to the same size as the Gem works (12 " x 10-^3/8") and the format is in keeping with the other early hummingbird pieces. In the Hunter painting, a male and female appear against the lush tropical landscape of South America. The female is on the nest and the male is nearby on the branch.

These hummingbird paintings should be seen in the context of the fascination that the tropical countries exerted over the imagination of the artists of the 19th century. Here was a land which seemed almost to represent the beginning of time -- lush, tropical forests, steamy atmosphere, active volcanoes. Among the most notable paintings of this region are Frederick Church's panoramic paintings of a land filled with volcanoes and yawning rifts in the earth. (Heade knew Church; they became friends when Heade moved to New York City in 1859.) As Theodore Stebbins notes in A New World -- Masterpieces of American Painting, 1760-1910, Heade's hummingbird paintings

". . . are the very image of Eden. They evoke in small scale the same feelings of awe and excitement as in Church's large Jamaican landscape(s)."

Heade's paintings of South American hummingbirds can also be compared to works by Audubon and Gould. Heade's works, however, differ from other naturalists' work because the landscape background in Heade's works is rnuch more elaborate. Where Audubon would place a bird on a branch against a blank background or occasionally create a more elaborate setting for the birds, Heade consistently created a full-blown habitat for them. Further, Heade focussed solely on hummingbirds rather than the range of animals depicted by other artists. He might add a flower (often an orchid or passionflower) or have birds fighting instead of nesting, but his fascination with hummingbirds was always in evidence.

These hummingbird paintings, however, should not be viewed merely as a variant on naturalist painting. These paintings, especially when a flower is included, also follow a tradition of still life paintings, where natural objects -- fruit or flowers, for example -- are painted out of doors. Ultimately, in his hummingbird paintings Heade has created works which cannot be so easily categorized. With the lush, exotic landscape and the portrayal of a fairy-like creature which in real life we only fleetingly glimpse, such paintings as Thorntails, Brazil embody a new type of painting where the exotic and fragile co-exist.