Approaching Thunder Storm | |
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Artist | Martin Johnson Heade |
Year | 1859 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 71.1 cm× 111.8 cm(28.0 in× 44.0 in) |
Location | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Approaching Thunder Storm is an 1859 painting by American painter Martin Johnson Heade. It was his largest painting to date. [1] The painting is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [2] It is praised for its dramatic depiction of the threatening mood of blackening skies and eerily illuminated terrain prior to the storm itself. [2] The painting has been connected to mounting tensions before the Civil War, which were often expressed in terms of natural imagery. [3] [4]
One of a series of paintings by Heade of coastal landscapes, this work was based on a sketch that Heade made of an approaching storm on Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. Here, a fisherman sits by the shore watching the storm approach; there is a faint red bolt of lightning in the left part of the sky. To his left are a dog, an iron kettle, and a spread-out boat sail. Another fisherman is rowing toward the shore, having left his sailboat out on the bay. His placement in the composition helps provide a sense of distance and a narrative for the scene. [5]
Strazdes suggests that "Heade, by refusing to prettify his scenery by association, was attempting to inject into his artistic vision a serious, monumental simplicity it had not previously possessed." [6] The composition is very open, as if seen through a wide-angle lens, and relatively empty. The swathes of dark color are novel for a landscape work. The long horizon is an influence from Heade's contemporary, Frederic Edwin Church (with whom he shared a studio), [7] as in paintings such as Niagara . [6]
Numerous pentimenti suggest that Heade altered the composition over time; for example, the hills on the horizon were originally larger and more jagged. Records suggest that Approaching Thunder Storm was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1860. [6] In 1868, Heade painted Thunder Storm on Narragansett Bay, a similar composition.
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