Sunset on the Rocks—Newport

Artist Martin Johnson Heade (American, 1819 - 1904)

Date1861

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 11 1/8 x 25 1/4 inches (28.26 x 64.14 cm)
Framed: 18 11/16 x 32 3/4 x 4 inches (47.47 x 83.19 x 10.16 cm)

Credit LineGift from the collection of Julia and Humbert Tinsman

Object numberF98-30/2

SignedSigned and dated lower left (in black paint): M. J. Heade 1861

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionIn the foreground is a dark ocean with large waves tipped with white foam. On the far left are two groups of jagged rocks. More than half of the canvas is taken up by the sky. It is sunset and the clouds are dark on top and orange/pink on the bottom. Two streaks of brilliant yellow appear near the horizon on the right side of the painting. Three sailboats appear on the horizon.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Nineteenth Century American Painting, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo., February 17–March 31, 1974, no cat.

Gallery Label

In 1861 Martin Johnson Heade spent the summer in Providence, Rhode Island, and made extensive visits to nearby Newport. Likely working afterwards from sketches in his New York studio, Heade neglected the resort town and instead focused on the turbulent ocean under a blood-red sky. He used a strong horizontal format with three defined bands that give an abstract quality to the marine subject. While the top and bottom stripes define the waves and clouds, respectively, the sky appears endlessly open in the central band. Heade gives viewers no safe harbor from the violent surf, which also separates the boats from shore. An anxiety appropriate for a painting created in the first year of the Civil War pervades the whole.

Provenance

John Hansen, Bangor, Me.;

(Vose Galleries, Boston, 1961);

to Maxim Karolik, Newport, R.I., 1961;

to Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1964;

to (Victor D. Spark, New York, 1966);

to Julia and Humbert Tinsman, Shawnee Mission, Kans., 1967;

to NAMA, 1998.

Published References

Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., The Life and Works of Martin Johnson Heade (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 68, 220.

Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., Carol Troyen, and Trevor F. Fairbrother, A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting 1760–1910, exh. cat. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1983), 255n3.

Sarah Cash, Ominous Hush: The Thunderstorm Paintings of Martin Johnson Heade, exh. cat. (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum, 1994), 53n35.

Sarah Cash, “Singing Beach, Manchester: Four Newly Identified Paintings of the North Shore of Massachusetts by Martin Johnson Heade,” American Art Journal 27 (1995–96), 98n26.

Margaret C. Conrads, “American Art Treasures Loaned to Nelson-Atkins,” Calendar (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art), December 1998, 2, cover.

Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., The Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade: A Critical Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 52, 218, no. 80.

Margaret C. Conrads, ed. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 (Kansas City, Mo.: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007), 1: 303–06, 2: 127–28.

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