According to the art historian Theodore E. Stebbins, the American painter Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) devoted more than 120 canvases to portrayals of the salt marshes of the northeastern coast of the United States. He also painted still-lifes, tropical flowers, hummingbirds, and a few portraits, but no subject received his obsessive devotion as did these coastal scenes. There is something hypnotic about them, individually and, especially, when viewed as a series of variations on a theme. The paintings are not large — Stebbins says few are more than 15 x 30 inches.
It's the stacks of salt hay that really set the pictures apart, the way their otherwordly forms — half mushroom, half alien landing-craft — form a middle element between the vastnesses of sky and marsh and the tiny human figures who seem much too insignificant to have built them. The weather, the time of day, and the details of the topography vary from canvas to canvas, but there is a haunting stillness to them all.
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