iii / Human Geology
While most of Heade’s compositions engage biotic strata, Tropical Uplands scales the geochronology of the Anthropocene. Heade paints the large portrait Tropical Uplands following his trip to the Caribbean and Central America in 1869.35
Martin Johnson Heade, Tropical Uplands, Oil on canvas, 1874, Yale University Art Gallery.
Heade tracks the passage of time through erosion, represented by rocks and small boulders rolling from the slopes. They expose iron-rich sediments that the artist pigments with microscopic strokes of oxidized red and amber.
The subtle details of the land surrounding the human settlement reveal Heade’s preoccupation with understanding the physical interactions between humans and the landscape. The scene depicts a cluster of vacant barracks nestled in a mountain valley or basin; a dirt road winding through the settlement dissolves into a river of rocks. The modest wooden barracks allude to possible settlements of enslaved people, maroons, laborers, or soldiers, each entrenched in histories of exploitation and plantation culture in Latin America.36
The vacant settlements prompt our reflection on the fate of its inhabitants and evoke a haunting sense of inhumanity. The topography and settlements of Tropical Uplands recall Heade's sketch of Bybrook Estate, a prominent sugar and rum export plantation bordering the Blue Mountains in Jamaica that prospered off the backs of over one hundred enslaved people until their emancipation in 1838.37, 38
Martin Johnson Heade, Jamaican Sketchbook (By Brook Estate), Graphite on paper, 1870, Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Upon Heade's visit in 1869, many plantations had become dormant. Somber memory sinks into the valley and assumes a state of stagnancy, unable to escape the high, encompassing ridges. Meanwhile, the landscape begins to undergo a geological reclamation. Loose rocks tumble from the right face of the mountain that will eventually transform the valley and bury the settlements in sediment. Over time, crops carbonize, human traces fossilize, and the wooden barracks decompose into earth.39
Heade employs a duality of inactivity and adaptability in Tropical Uplands that involves the push and pull of human and non-human forces of a biocentric framework. The animation of the landscape reveals Heade's faith in the restorative ability of the landscape- the land itself becomes the sentient body and practices ecological reflexivity through a physical response to human disgrace. Anthropogenic memory does not dissipate, instead becoming naturalized into the geologic strata and pushed down into the tectonic folds of the Earth. Heade anticipates both geological and human consequence in Tropical Uplands that ensue the epochal imprint of the Anthropocene.
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