Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) had the longest career and produced perhaps the most varied body of work of any American painter of the nineteenth century. His prolific oeuvre ranges from American coastal marshes and marine landscapes to the lush tropical splendor of South and Central American landscapes, birds, and flowers. An independent thinker as well as a world traveler, Heade developed a singular approach to landscape and still life painting, adapting some elements of the style and practice of the Hudson River School to his own more Darwinian vision.

While Heade had only a minor reputation in his own day and was completely forgotten for many decades after his death, he is now rightly regarded as an artist of great significance and originality, and as the only American whose landscapes and still lifes are equally important.