Martin Johnson Heade
Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904)
Becalmed, Long Island Sound, 1876
Oil on canvas, 14 x 29 in.
Signed, dated lower right: M. J. Heade 1876
Provenance: (possibly) N. K. Fairbank, 1876; Samuel Peck, New Jersey; with Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, April–May 1966; with M. Knoedler and Co., New York, 1966; private collection, Branford, Connecticut, until c. 1980; with Coe Kerr Gallery, New York; Mr. and Mrs. Theodore G. and Eleanor S. Congdon, Pasadena, California, until 2026
Exhibited: (possibly) Inter-State Industrial Exposition, Chicago, 1876. (as A Calm); College Park, University of Maryland Art Gallery, Martin Johnson Heade, 1969 [traveling exhibition], no. 38; Huntington, Long Island, New York, Hecksher Museum; Springfield, Massachusetts, George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum, A Private Eye: Fifty Nineteenth-Century American Paintings, Drawings, and Watercolors from the Stebbins Collection, September 30-November 6, 1977; November 22, 1977-January 8, 1978, no. 25; Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1850-1875: Paintings, Drawings, Photographs, February 10-June 15, 1980, no. 249; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts; Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Martin Johnson Heade, September 29, 1999-January 17, 2000, February 13-May 7, 2000, May 28-August 17, 2000.
Literature: Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Martin Johnson Heade, College Park, University of Maryland, 1969, illus.; Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., The Life and Works of Martin Johnson Heade, New Haven, Connecticut, 1975, p. 110, no. 192, illus.; C.L. Troyen, A Private Eye: Fifty Nineteenth-Century American Paintings, Drawings, and Watercolors from the Stebbins Collection, Huntington, New York, 1977, p. 58, illus.; John Wilmerding and Lisa Fellows Andrus, American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1850-1875: Paintings, Drawings, Photographs, New Haven, Eastern Press, 1980, pp. 46, 106, 117, 225, 232, illus.; Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Martin Johnson Heade, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1999, pp. 17, 27, no. 12, illus.; Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Janet L. Comey, and Karen E. Quinn, The Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade: A Critical Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000, cat. no. 248, pp. 111, 262