Born in rural Pennsylvania, Martin Johnson Heade acquired early training in art under the Quaker coach painter Edward Hicks (1780-1849). With the support of his father, Heade traveled to Europe for further study, visiting England and France before joining other American artists in Rome. By 1843, Heade had returned to the United States, settling in New York City as a painter of genre subjects. The artist traveled restlessly following a second trip to Rome about 1848, and during much of the 1850s he worked as a portraitist in various cities including St. Louis, Chicago, Trenton, New Jersey; and Providence. It was sometime during this period that Heade painted his first landscapes.

Back in New York by 1859, Heade took a studio in the new Tenth Street Studio Building. He subsequently moved to Boston but continued to travel frequently and widely. In 1863 he made the first of several trips to South and Central America, where he painted tropical landscapes and numerous studies of hummingbirds and orchids. Later he visited British Columbia and San Francisco before moving to Washington, DC, and then Florida in 1883. Settling permanently in St. Augustine, Heade became a leader in the city's art community and painted actively until his death in 1904.

Singing Beach, Manchester, Massachusetts depicts a popular resort site about twenty-five miles from Boston on Massachusetts's North Shore. One of several views of Singing Beach made by Heade during the early 1860s, the Currier painting encompasses a number of area landmarks, including the tip of Eagle Head Rock on the left and the small islet known as Rock Dundy on the right. One can make out the low shape of Kettle Island on the horizon. A sense of tranquility pervades the canvas, reinforced by the presence of several pleasure craft gliding over the surface of the calm water.

As Sarah Cash has shown in her study of Heade's paintings of Singing Beach, the artist altered his subject to compose a pleasing image. From Heade's vantage point near Eagle Head Rock, the outcrop of Rock Dundy should not be visible. By including it within his image, the artist effectively balances the composition on the left and right. The addition of the rock (as well as the sailboat and rowboat) also helps to establish the illusion of spatial recession. Finally, the distinctive profile of Rock Dundy serves to confirm the location of Heade's subject, allowing the viewer to make positive associations with this specific site.

Singing Beach derives its name from the peculiar squeaking sound made when one runs briskly over the sand. Nearby Manchester became a summer resort for Bostonians beginning in the 1840s and was well established by the time Heade visited there for the first time in 1861. It is not known how the artist settled on Singing Beach as a subject, but at least three other painters had preceded Heade there. In 1857 Boston landscapist Samuel W. Griggs (1827-1898) exhibited a view of "Eaglehead, Manchester, Mass." at the Boston Athenaeum, and in 1859 John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872) traveled to Manchester, where he too made views of Eagle Head Rock and the adjacent beach. In 1860 James A. Suydam (1819-1865) exhibited a view of "Manchester Beach" at the National Academy of Design in New York City. Later artists who depicted Singing Beach include Sanford Robinson Gifford (q.v.) in 1864-65 and Winslow Homer (q.v.) in 1870.

Singing Beach, Manchester, Massachusetts was bequeathed to the Currier Museum of Art in 2002 by Henry Melville Fuller.

VSD

REFERENCES

Sarah Cash. "Singing Beach, Manchester: Four Newly Identified Paintings of the North Shore of Massachusetts by Martin Johnson Heade." The American Art Journal XXVII, nos. 1-2 (1995-96): 84-98.

Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., with contributions by Janet L. Comey, Karen E. Quinn, and Jim Wright. Martin Johnson Heade. Ex. cat. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1999.

Theodore E. Stebbins Jr. The Life and Works of Martin Johnson Heade. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975.