Rio de Janeiro Bay

Martin Johnson Heade

National Gallery of Art

Across a short stretch of sand in front of us, waves of bottle-green water break over two boulders on the shoreline, with sailboats in the water beyond, in this wide, horizontal painting. One boulder is at the left edge of the painting; the other is a short distance away, about a quarter of the way across. The water cascades down between those large rocks. Across the rest of the beach, the waves flare up to break toward us in white, foamy surf. The land curves back into view on both sides of the canvas with muted, sage-green hills and, to our left, dark green trees on more craggy boulders. A more distant finger of land to our left stretches nearly halfway across the horizon, which comes about halfway up the composition. Minuscule in scale there, smoke pours out of a chimney, which is surrounded by pale yellow buildings. A mound emerges from the horizon to our right of center. About ten sailboats float on the water. The closest one to us is near the center of the painting, and the tiny forms of people aboard can just barely be made out. The other boats become smaller as they move back to the horizon, and some are only a touch of white or gray on the canvas. White and pale lavender-purple clouds sweep up from the horizon into the sky, which glows butter yellow along the left edge. The sky cools to mint green in the upper right corner. Several white or brown birds fly across the sky or low over the water. The artist signed and dated the lower left, “M. J. Heade 1864.”