Newburyport Marsh (Marsh Haystacks),

ca. 1871–75

Heade is credited with discovering the salt marsh as subject, and Newburyport Marsh (Marsh Haystacks) belongs to a long series of haystack scenes that portray his favorite marshes in the adjoining towns of Newbury and Newburyport, Massachusetts. The quietly evocative composition and nuanced coloration make this painting a superlative illustration of the artist’s approach to capturing the slower, more muted cadences of nature, rhythms characterized by the tidewater’s gradual ebb and flow. The painting’s exaggerated horizontality, low horizon line, meandering stream leading into the composition, and haystacks dotting the horizon like chess pieces on a board are hallmarks of Heade’s marsh scenes. In these works pictorial elements are distilled and arranged to conform to a realistic yet abstract and conceptual geometry, and narrative detail is stripped away in favor of a fundamental quietude where atmospheric effects prevail, both isolating and unifying individual forms.