Setting Background color for QTableWidget horizontal header

I am trying to set the background color for the horizontalHeader of my QTableWidget and nothing seems to work. I have tried setting the background color using setStyle( ) to no effect.

QHeaderView* header = new QHeaderView( Qt::Horizontal, this );
QString backgroundStyle = QString( "background-color: rgba(99,0,0,0);\n" );
header->setStyleSheet( backgroundStyle );
QTableWidget* contentTable_ = new QTableWidget(this)
contentTable_->setHorizontalHeader( header );

I have tried changing the brush for the background color role, no effect.

QHeaderView* header = new QHeaderView( Qt::Horizontal, this );
QPalette pp = header->palette();
pp.setBrush( QPalette::Window, QBrush(QColor(Qt::red)));
pp.setBrush( QPalette::Background, QBrush(QColor(Qt::red)));
header->setPalette( pp );
QTableWidget* contentTable_ = new QTableWidget(this)
contentTable_->setHorizontalHeader( header );

I even looked into setting up a delegate for the header so I could override the paint method...nothing (and the documentation even says that QHeaderView ignores delegates).

Sooo.....is it even possible for me to paint my own header or am I stuck with the light gray default that it currently insists on drawing? I am trying to get 'red' to work for now but ultimately I would like to be able to paint a gradient to the background.

I'd appreciate any help. Thanks!

Figured it out. For those of you who need to be able to do this you can subclass the QHeaderView and reimplement the paintSection member function. I had tried reimplementing 'paint' which doesn't work...but paintSection does. :)