Two Owls at Sunset

Painted during a period of partisan conflict, this composition’s doubling of owls and trees seems to insist on dialogue and reflection. Though the artist’s identity remains uncertain, it is interesting to note that Heade spent his twilight years writing under the pseudonym “Didymus,” the ancient Greek word for double or twin, for the popular 19th-century hunting and fishing magazine "Forest and Stream." A regular correspondent concerned with the hemisphere’s birds (and those who overhunted them), Didymus wrote that “wild creatures . . . are put on this earth to inhabit it with [us as] more than mere bundles of flesh and bone.”Heade wrote often of the “wild, unfrequented marshes” of the northeast landscape that provided shelter for the hunted birds.—Saffron Sener, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History, Harvard University, and Curatorial Intern in American Art, Harvard Art Museums