In 1863, Martin Johnson Heade traveled to Brazil, where he planned to undertake a series of twenty hummingbird "portraits." He hoped to publish the paintings as a series of chromolithographs that would be titled, Gems of Brazil. Although the book never saw publication, Heade did exhibit twelve of the paintings in Rio de Janeiro in 1864. The artist's work so impressed the Emperor Dom Pedro II that he awarded Heade with the Order of the Rose, the country's most important order of chivalry at the time.

Here we see a Cattleya (“Cat-lay-ah”) orchid and a single hummingbird painted life-size. At the painting's center, the brilliant green and fuchsia hummingbird perches on a leaf of the orchid, itself a starburst of cotton-candy pink. The orchid is rooted onto the branch of a tree which is almost overgrown with moss and vines. The branch extends back and around to frame the bird and flower against the fully-realized landscape of a South American mountain lake under a humid and stormy sky.