Wandering in Pictures · 3 of 24

Passion Flowers and Hummingbirds

Two hummingbirds keep company with red passion flowers on a vine above a misty forest valley.

Painting · Martin Johnson Heade, about 1870 to 1883

A painting of a winding vine with two red passion flowers and buds, two hummingbirds on the right, and mist and mossy plants below.
Martin Johnson Heade · Public domain

Let your eyes wander

  1. Begin with the two great red passion flowers, open wide on their winding vine.
  2. In the heart of the upper flower, a white crown holds a small cluster of stamens.
  3. On the curving stem at the right, a white-breasted hummingbird sits with its beak pointed up.
  4. Just above it, a darker hummingbird hovers with raised wings, a thin twig held in its beak.
  5. Half hidden in the leaves behind them, a third red flower is only beginning to open.
  6. Pale grey moss trails like soft beards from the bare branches at the upper left.
  7. Below, mist fills the valley, and the tops of distant trees rise out of it like clouds.
  8. At the bottom left, a tiny spot of golden yellow sits on the tip of a mossy broken branch.

There is no last thing to find. Look again wherever your eyes would like to rest, or close them and keep the picture.

Keep going

Nothing here needs finishing. Every door leads somewhere, and the last one is always darker than this.