In a letter, Dr. Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., curator of America art at the Fogg Art Museum and author of the Martin Johnson Heade catalogue raisonné, writes, “It is an unusual work in Heade’s oeuvre, as a sketch made long after the great painting at the Metropolitan Museum, Approaching Thunderstorm, 1859. In 1895–1896 Heade was in his mid-seventies, living in St. Augustine, Florida. He never retired but later living his last decade devoted himself to making still lifes of various kinds, including [orchids] and hummingbirds, and to small landscapes depicting either Florida or northern marshes. These later were largely done by memory, and they often reflect earlier compositions. Your picture, Approaching Storm, is unique in being a memory of a specific painting, and in being devoted to a marine thunderstorm subject.”[1]

Kevin J. Avery addressed this painting, writing, “Just why Heade revisited his Narragansett storm subject after so long a hiatus can never be known for sure. When he did, though, he clearly melded elements of his two earlier conceptions. From the 1859 painting he reprised the centralized spatial design with the triangle of features including a seated man on shore and a distant sailboat (but with a dinghy moored to the shore instead of the earlier painting’s draped sail). As in the earlier painting, too, spits of pale terrain at right and left enclose a compressed oval of black water that opens onto the wider bay beyond and the opposite shore of low hills. In most other respects, though, Approaching Storm recalls the 1868 painting.”[2]

This painting will be included in the forthcoming addition to the catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work by Dr. Theodore E. Stebbins Jr.

[1] Dr. Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., letter to Michael Altman, dated July 29, 2004.
[2] Kevin J. Avery (unpublished essay, January 2022).