Cherokee Roses in a Glass, ca. 1883–95

Provenance

Estate of the artist

David David Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Gertrude Stein Gallery, New York, New York, by 1975

Adams Davidson Galleries, Washington, DC

Mrs. James Jennison, Alexandria, Virginia

Private collection

Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, New York

Knoedler-Modarco S.A., New York, New York

Private collection, acquired from above, 1980

Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, New York, May 24, 2001, lot 100, from above

Private collection, Bend, Oregon

Exhibited

The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, American Cornucopia: 19th Century Still Lifes and Studies, April 5–July 30, 1976

Literature

Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., The Life and Works of Martin Johnson Heade (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 169, fig. 90, 271, no. 304, 272, no. 305 (as Flowers on Red Velvet).

John V. Brindle and Sally Secrist, American Cornucopia: 19th Century Still Lifes and Studies (Pittsburgh: The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, 1976), 8, 20, 21, cat. 19.

Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., The Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade: A Critical Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 338, no. 562.

Related Work 

Cherokee Roses, ca. 1890, oil on canvas, 10 x 16¼ inches; Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan

Note

Theodore E. Stebbins Jr. writes: “During the mid-1880s, shortly after his arrival in Florida, Heade made a series of oil sketches of the Cherokee rose (Rosa laevigata), a beautiful white flower that grows wild in the South. Its large, flat blossoms have distinct golden-yellow stamens, and its crisp leaves are dark and shiny.”_[1]

Critics of the time praised his depictions of the Cherokee roses. The St. Augustine Tatler wrote of Heade’s studies “of the Cherokee rose that grows so profusely here, climbing over stumps and hedges, transforming them into things of beauty,” describing them as “wonderfully like; the pure white petals, yellow stamens and glossy, dark leaves are so natural as to deceive.”_[2]

In the 1975 catalogue raisonné, this work was published as both cat. 304 (Cherokee Roses in a Glass Vase) and cat. 305 (Flowers on Red Velvet)._[3]

_[1] Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., The Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade: A Critical Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 157.
_[2] Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., Martin Johnson Heade (Boston: Museum of Fine Art, 1999), 123–24.
_[3] Stebbins, The Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade: A Critical Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné, 338.