Artist. Born and reared in Lumberville, a small rural community near Doylestown, in Buck’s County, Pennsylvania. He was the eldest son in the large family of Joseph Cowell Heed, the owner of a farm and a lumber mill. The youth’s first lessons in art were provided locally by Edward Hicks and probably also by Thomas Hicks, Edward’s cousin, a rudimentary instruction apparently never replaced by more formal training. His earliest works were produced during the 1840s and were chiefly portraits. Martin travelled to Europe several times as a young man. Martin became artist who travelled from place to place on American shores, and exhibited in Philadelphia in 1841 and New York in 1843. Martin had friendships with artists of the Hudson River School and that later led to an interest in landscape art. In 1863, he planned to publish a volume of Brazilian hummingbirds and tropical flowers, but the project was eventually abandoned. He travelled to the tropics several times thereafter, and continued to paint birds and flowers. Heade married in 1883 and moved to St. Augustine, Florida. His chief works from this period were Floridian landscapes and flowers, particularly magnolias laid upon velvet cloth.  Even though New York left an enduring mark on Heade’s landscape painting and is the city to which he was most closely bound, he seems not to have put down deep roots even there, he never joined the National Academy of Design, not even as an Associate.  Martin was not a widely known artist during his lifetime, but his work attracted the notice of scholars, art historians, and collectors during the 1940s. He quickly became recognized as a major American artist. Although often considered a Hudson River School artist, some critics and scholars take exception to this categorization. His works are now in major museums and collections. His paintings are occasionally discovered in unlikely places such as garage sales and flea markets. (bio by: Shock)