Passion Flowers with Three Hummingbirds

Three hummingbirds hover among bright red passion flowers, set against dense tropical greenery with misty mountains rising behind them. This oil painting was completed in 1875 and is held at the San Antonio Museum of Art. It entered the collection through a purchase made possible by the Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation. The artist, Martin Johnson Heade, lived from 1819 to 1904 and worked within the Hudson River school tradition. In the composition, the layered foliage and the distant haze of the mountains give the scene a sense of depth, drawing attention from the delicate birds in the foreground back toward the softened, atmospheric peaks beyond.