York Harbor, Coast of Maine
Martin Johnson Heade (American, 1819–1904)
1877
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 38.7 × 76.8 cm (15 1/4 × 30 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- York Harbor
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Purchased with funds provided by Mrs. Herbert A. Vance; Americana, Lacy Armour and Roger McCormick endowments; through prior gifts of Dr. and Mrs. R. Gordon Brown, Emily Crane Chadbourne, George F. Harding Collection, Brooks McCormick,…
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This painting represents Martin Johnson Heade’s mature style from the 1870s and contains many of the compositional elements that have led modern scholars to celebrate the artist as a proponent of Luminism. A 20th-century term, Luminism has consistently been linked to the 19th-century philosophical doctrine of transcendentalism. Stylistically, it is characterized by a horizontal format; tight, invisible brushwork; and pervasive light emanating from an unseen source. Together these qualities embody the intellectual spirit of the American writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), who found transcendental unity in the contemplation of nature’s stillness.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
