: Sixteen of the 20 paintings of hummingbirds that the American
artist Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) intended as illustrations
for a lavish book, The Gems of Brazil, are at the Yale
University Art Gallery, on loan from the Manoogian Collection.
Heade painted the tiny hummingbirds, frequently referred to as
"gems" because of the intense iridescence of their feathers, in
compositions that exquisitely combine elements of the Brazilian
landscape with ornithological illustration.
"We are always delighted when private collectors allow us to show
their treasures to a public audience," said Helen A. Cooper, the
Holcombe T. Green, Jr curator of American paintings and
sculpture, "but we are particularly grateful to have these
glowing canvases warm our New England winter with their tropical
beauty. While fully appreciated in his time," she continued,
"Heade is today recognized for his originality and mastery of
landscapes as different as the tropical forests in The Gems of
Brazil and the Massachusetts coast in "Sudden Shower, Newbury
Marshes," which hangs nearby in our permanent collection."
A self-described "monomaniac" on the subject of hummingbirds,
raising and taming them for much of his life, Heade went to
Brazil in 1863 determined to create a book rivaling John James
Audubon's Birds of America. He exhibited the paintings in
Rio de Janeiro, where he was knighted by Emperor Dom Pedro II for
his artistic achievement, then he took them to London to work on
the chromolithographs and text. Alas, owing to lack of money and
the artist's dissatisfaction with the quality of the
reproductions. The Gems of Brazil was never published. In
1865, Heade sold the paintings to an English railroad magnate and
sometime before the Second World War they were purchased at a
country auction in England by the art historian Lord Kenneth
Clark. They remained in his family until 1981, when they entered
the collection of Richard Manoogian, Yale class of 1960, who has
generously loaned them to the Yale Art Gallery through the end of
June 2004.
The Yale University Art Gallery is at Chapel and High Streets
in New Haven. For information 203-432-0600 or
www.yale.edu/artgallery.
