ii / Hummingbirds
Martin Johnson Heade's careful monographic approach to rendering species takes a radical turn in 1870, after which he begins to construct fantastical interactions of orchids and hummingbirds. Species that do not naturally coexist are choreographed in foreground displays against a vast jungle canopy.
Martin Johnson Heade, Jungle Orchids and Hummingbirds, Oil on canvas, 1872, Yale University Art Gallery.
Heade employs the macrocosmic property of biocentrism by layering the landscape and the portrait into a single composition, like Jungle Orchids and Hummingbirds. In doing so, Heade collapses the middle ground to leave the foreground and background freestanding.
Nithya Guthikonda, Dissection of (Martin Johnson Heade, Jungle Orchids and Hummingbirds, Oil on canvas, 1872, Yale University Art Gallery.) using Generative AI tool in Adobe Photoshop.
This stratified layering of depth creates a dioramic scene comparable to the theater cyclorama or 19th-century paper 'peep show'. The bilayer structure of Heade's Jungle Orchids and Hummingbirds also closely resembles the modern natural history diorama (although not formally implemented until the early 1900s).
Carneval, Hand-colored lithograph, ca. 1834-38, Victoria and Albert Museum, Gestetner Paper Peepshow Collection.
JMB, Phantasie Darstellungen in Walde, Hand-colouring etching, ca. 1840, Victoria and Albert Museum, Gestetner Paper Peepshow Collection. Referenced from Ralph Hyde, Paper Peepshows: The Jacqueline & Jonathan Gestetner Collection, (Antique Collectors' Club, 2015).
Charles H. Coles, Paul Wright working on model of American Bison Group, 1939, 1939, courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.
Each of these works are constructed with a virtual background, a simulated environment that serves as the backdrop for staged foreground activity.28, 29
Thane L. Bierwert, Fruit Pigeons from Marquesas Bird Group, 1944, courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.
The diorama, in particular, is observed by sticking one’s nose into its curved construction such that the viewer becomes optically immersed. Heade scales the background of Jungle Orchids and Hummingbirds into a wide-angle virtual perspective, as if the concave edges of a diorama were flattened to fit within the frame of the painting.
Charles H. Cole, Children with Museum Instructor Studying the Alpine Bird Group, Hall of Birds of the World, 1936, Photographic Negative, December 1936, courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.
Like the diorama, Jungle Orchids and Hummingbirds is an illusory representation of the tropics, a commercial spectacle for visitors to observe and envision themselves encountering in person.
Heade manifests ecological reflexivity in Jungle Orchid and Hummingbirds through a physical deformation of perspective that creates not only a structural, but also ideological “instability of every point of view.”30 Responsive to the painting's reception as a painterly peep show for Western audiences, Heade's manipulation of the scene reflects the colonial theft and fragmentation of sights and specimens that leave behind an inverted patchwork landscape.
In addition to altering the background, Heade distorts the integrity of each specimen. He renders each hummingbird with anatomical accuracy, however, animates the creatures in a manner that challenges their evolutionary ability. During his 1863 trip, Heade observes the territorial nature of hummingbirds, specifically noting how they avoid one another or approach each other with aggression.31 He investigates this behavior by choreographing the close interaction of two male birds of differing species in Jungle Orchid and Hummingbirds (Peruvian Sheartail and the Ruby-Topaz Hummingbird) and other compositions in the 1870s.
Interaction between the male Ruby-Topaz Hummingbird and male Peruvian Sheartail in Jungle Orchids and Hummingbirds.
Darwin’s The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, published the year before Heade paints Jungle Orchid and Hummingbirds, blurs the line between the natural/animal and human kingdom by standardizing the conception of beauty, selection, and other ‘innate’ qualities.32, 33 Darwin’s publications propose a biocentric reconstruction of the human as a species existing among other life-forms, rather than as a superior genus that overrides evolutionary theory.34 In opposition to anthropocentric views that the Anthropocene readily slips into, biocentric reason of inter-species congruence inspires Heade’s ‘search’ for similarities between humans and nature. He reflects this preoccupation by anthropomorphizing two geographically distinct hummingbirds in a “face-off” or “conversation” in Jungle Orchid and Hummingbirds.
In a novel attempt to balance humans and nature, Heade entangles both realms in this imaginative scene. The interactions he fosters between and among species reflect Heade’s greater interest in social dynamics, both faunal and human, in the face of empire. His hummingbirds become an experimentation of territory, displacement, and control.
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