Focus on Orchid and Hummingbirds near a Mountain Lake and analyze the abstract.
Orchid and Hummingbirds near a Mountain Lake is a painting by Martin Johnson Heade, which he completed sometime between 1875 and 1890.: 322  Some scholars see the sensual depiction of the orchid and the nearly touching beaks of the birds as conveying romantic or even sexual overtones. Others see Heade's interest in orchids and hummingbirds as an exploration of dominance and survival in nature, perhaps inspired by Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory. The work is now in the collection of the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, having been donated as part of the Carolyn A. and Peter S. Lynch collection.Works such as this earned Heade critical and commercial success during his lifetime.: ix  His reputation grew substantially during the second half of the twentieth century, and the curator Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. remarked in 1992 that "Heade has been recognized during the last fifty years as one of the most original and most talented of all American artists.": 10
Boston College Peter S. Lynch Carolyn A. Boston Martin Johnson Heade McMullen Museum of Art Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr.