About this work
On a small vertical canvas — just 12¼ by 10 inches, painted around 1863–1864 — Heade packs an entire ecosystem into breathtaking proximity. A lush tropical landscape centers on two Amethyst Woodstar hummingbirds and a blossoming orchid; a thin branch descends from the upper right toward the middle of the canvas, and two emerald-green birds perch on it, rendered at true life scale.
The lower bird faces right with wings and tail fanned open in a V-shape, its brilliant magenta throat feathers fading into a white chest patch.
The second bird sits higher on the branch in profile, looking down toward its companion, while directly below the open-winged bird a five-petaled white orchid glows against the shadowed understory.
Unlike most ornithological images of the era, which pictured specimens against blank backdrops, Heade positions his birds inside a tropical landscape whose dense, visually impenetrable undergrowth hints at how elusive these creatures truly were.
Heade's desire to paint live hummingbirds — a fascination since boyhood — led him to Brazil for seven months in 1863 and 1864.
The birds' incessant movement made painting them in flight impossible, so he worked instead from the skins of dead specimens he found in Rio's market.
Believing no artist had yet captured the rich iridescence of tropical hummingbird feathers, Heade set out to create a series of images that could rival the scientific illustrations of exotic species produced by John James Audubon and others.
He painted sixteen works as part of a planned group of twenty he called "Gems of Brazil," a title drawn from the popular association of hummingbirds with sparkling, precious jewels.
The proposed book never materialized for lack of sponsors, though Emperor Dom Pedro II admired the hummingbird paintings enough to become a partial patron of the project — and ultimately knighted Heade for them. That Heade's fundraising efforts failed may have been because he presented an artistic vision of the birds rather than simply portraying them as specimens — which is precisely what makes these paintings endure.
*Amethyst Woodstar* belongs in a room that rewards close looking: a study, a library, or a narrow hallway where a viewer passes near enough to register the feather-by-feather precision. Heade used brilliant colors to show the jewel-like beauty of the birds' plumage, and that intensity rewards warm
