Approaching Thunder Storm

Martin Johnson Heade American

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 761

Heade became a good friend of the acclaimed landscape painter Frederic Church (1826–1900), but he worked on the periphery of the Hudson River School. He specialized not in dramatic wilderness subjects, as many of the school did, but preferred more prosaic marshlands and coastal settings. Even when he painted storms, as here, he portrayed not the actual tempest, but its tense preamble of blackening sky and eerily illumined terrain. This painting was based on a sketch of an approaching storm that Heade witnessed on Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay about 1858. The image became the basis for a more elaborate and synthetic version of the subject painted in 1868 (Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas).

#4360. Approaching Thunder Storm, Part 1

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  1. 4360. Approaching Thunder Storm, Part 1
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Approaching Thunder Storm, Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904), Oil on canvas, American

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Approaching Thunder Storm, Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904), Oil on canvas, American
Approaching Thunder Storm, Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904), Oil on canvas, American

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