Martin Johnson Heade's 'Thunder Storm on Narragansett Bay.' - 1868; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Magazine Antiques, March, 1994 by Sarah Cash

In 1868 Martin Johnson Heade completed his acknowledged masterpiece, Thunder Storm on Narragansett Bay (Pl. I), the culmination of the thunderstorm theme he had been exploring for nine years. He probably began the painting in the summer of 1867, and he had finished it by February 1868, when he bought its frame from Seth M. Vose, his dealer in Providence, Rhode Island.(1) No preparatory studies for the painting and virtually no documentation of its history have come to light since its rediscovery in 1943.

The painting was first shown publicly in March 1868 at the spring exhibition of the Brooklyn Art Association in Brooklyn, New York. A month later it was part of the popular annual exhibition at the National Academy of Design in New York City. Although there was little critical comment,(2) the painting was sold to an unidentified collector while it was at the National Academy.(3)

Twentieth-century writers have often noted the remarkable formal qualities of Thunder Storm on Narragansett Bay. Indeed, at the time of its rediscovery it was the eerie intensity of the painting that especially appealed to a public familiar with surrealism. Although much has been written about the painting, and it has been frequently exhibited since 1943, only two scholars have speculated on the meaning the painting held for Heade and his audience,(4) and none have explored his creative process.

A small traveling exhibition entitled Ominous Hush: The Thunderstorm Paintings of Martin Johnson Heade, now at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, explores the relationship of the painting in Plate I to seven other thunderstorm views painted by Heade between 1859 and 1868. Most of them depict Narragansett Bay (see Fig. 6), not far from Providence, Rhode Island, the city in which Heade lived from 1857 to early 1859, and again in 1860, 1861, and 1866. An examination of the preliminary studies for the known major thunderstorm paintings confirms that Heade developed the finished pictures in the traditional manner of the Hudson River school. He made on-site pencil sketches during the summer and on at least one occasion worked out the composition as a small oil in the studio (Pl. III). He combined elements from these studies to suit his needs so that the final canvases are often composites rather than topographical views.

[CHART OMITTED]

Heade's Approaching Thunder Storm of 1859(5) (Pl. IV) depicts a specific site, "[Rocky](6) Point from Prudence Is.," as noted on the sketch shown in Figure 3, one of two preliminary sketches for the painting (see also Fig. 5). A photograph (Fig. 4) verifies that the view is north from Prudence Island, in the middle of Narragansett Bay, to a section of Warwick called Rocky Point. Heade probably made the two studies during the summer of 1858, sketching from Sheep Pen Cove at the jagged northern end of the island, where the shore line is marked by two spits (visible at the right in the painting).(7) On the less detailed sketch (Fig. 5) Heade made notes about the weather, color, and light. The sketch in Figure 3, surely the later of the two, is more finished and topographically detailed and shows the entire composition of the painting, albeit from a more distant vantage point. In the second sketch and the painting, Heade has altered the perspective, compressing the land masses and separating the fingers of land by water. Both sketches show more topographical features on the distant slope of Rocky Point than can be seen from the cove today. Heade may have enhanced what he saw, but it is also possible that the topography has changed. Some features of the second sketch were not retained in the finished painting: several rocks, two figures wearing hats, and two sailboats--one in the distance and one docked at a pier, where a man accompanies a horse-drawn cart near a large building.

[CHART OMITTED]

In 1867 Heade took a similar approach when he painted Point Judith, R.I.,(8) a site he had represented twice before.(9) In its final form, the 1867 painting is known today only through the engraving shown in Figure 1. A preparatory drawing (Fig. 2), probably made in the summer of 1866 when Heade was again living in Providence, only summarily outlines the land masses shown in the engraving, but both capture the distinctive profile of the promontory with its raised tip and central saddle. Both also show Point Judith Lighthouse (built in 1857) at the tip and a number of farmhouses along the point. In his studio Heade painted the small oil study shown in Plate III that is based in part on the pencil drawing, apparently in preparation for the unlocated painting. As indicated by the engraving, the final canvas retains the stormy sky of the oil study as well as several elements from the pencil drawing that are not present in the oil sketch: the rocks in the foreground, distant ships, the stick protruding from the shallows at the left of center, and the lighthouse and houses on Point Judith. Finally, Heade added a few details not found in either of the preliminary works, such as the fragment of a wreck at the lower right and a stick protruding from the sand in the extreme left foreground.