Martin Johnson Heade
(Lumberville. Pennsylvania 1819 - St. Augustine, Florida 1904)

Portrait Study of Oliver Cromwell

oil on canvas

21 1/4×17 inches (54×43.2 cm.)

PROVENANCE:
Joseph Bradley Heed (half-brother of the artist), Lumberville, Pennsylvania, to his son Charles Rittenhouse Heed, Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania, to his daughter Mrs. Renee Heed Grant, Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania, until 1972

LITERATURE Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., The Life and Works of Martin Johnson Heade, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1975, p. 230, no. 95, illustrated Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., The Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade: A Critical Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2000, p. 210, no. 51, illustrated, (as location unknown)

This painting will be included in Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr.’s forthcoming third edition of his catalogue raisonné of Martin Johnson Heade’s work.

Martin Johnson Heade was one of the most important American painters of the nineteenth century. Extremely versatile, his output included portraits, history, genre, landscape and marine painting as well as extraordinary floral still lifes and ornithological studies. He began his training in Pennsylvania with Edward Hicks (1780 - 1849). His earliest known work dates from 1839 and is a Portrait of a Young Lady now in the Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey. Presently fifty-six portraits are known to have been painted by the artist.

Our portrait of Oliver Cromwell, which Theodore Stebbins’s dates to circa 1865, was a study for the painting of Cromwell that now hangs in the Butler Institute of Youngstown, Ohio. The painting was commissioned by John Russell Bartlett for Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island when Heade was in London. He was paid $350 for the work, which at that point marked his most expensive sale. Although the choice might seem odd for an American institution, Cromwell in nineteenth century America was regarded as a hero. (1) Revered for abolishing the monarchy in England and the establishment of a republic, his inclusion in a collection that otherwise consisted of prominent figures from Rhode Island’s history was logical. (2)

Heade based this portrait on two miniatures by Samuel Cooper (1609 - 1672) and an anonymous cast. When Brown University’s painting was exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum in October 1865 the Boston Daily Evening Transcript wrote:

Of all the portraits we have seen of this great man, there are none in our opinion which conveys so correct an idea of the man we suppose Cromwell to have been. In it we see the stern old puritan, statesman and soldier. Mr. Heade has made a capital picture, showing that in this department of his art he is as successful as in his landscapes, which gained him so much favor in London. (3)

Our study was obviously just as treasured within the heart of Heade’s own family.

(1) Stebbins, op. cit., 1975 p.18. (2) Stebbins, op. cit., 2000, pp. 17 & 210. (3) Ibid, p. 210.

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