John Martin | |
|---|---|
 Martin by Henry Warren, 1839 | |
| Born | (1789-07-19)19 July 1789 Haydon Bridge,Northumberland, England |
| Died | 17 February 1854(1854-02-17) (aged 64) |
| Movement | Romanticism |
| Spouse | |
John Martin (19 July 1789 – 17 February 1854) was an EnglishRomanticist painter, engraver, and illustrator. He was known for his typically vast and dramatic paintings of religious subjects andfantastic compositions, populated with minute figures placed in imposing landscapes. Martin's paintings, and the prints made from them, enjoyed great success with the general public, withThomas Lawrence referring to him as "the most popular painter of his day". He was also criticized byJohn Ruskin and other critics.[1]
Martin was born in July 1789 in a one-room cottage,[2] atHaydon Bridge, nearHexham in Northumberland, North East England. He was the fourth son of Fenwick Martin, formerfencing master. He was apprenticed by his father to a coachbuilder inNewcastle upon Tyne to learnheraldic painting, but owing to a dispute over wages the indentures were cancelled, and he was placed instead underBoniface Musso, an Italian artist, father of the enamel painterCharles Muss.[3]
With his master, Martin moved from Newcastle to London in 1806,[4] where he married at the age of nineteen. He supported himself by giving drawing lessons, and by painting in watercolours, as well as on china and glass — his only surviving painted plate is now in a private collection in England. In his leisure time, he studiedperspective and architecture.[3]
His brothers wereWilliam, the eldest, an inventor; Richard, a tanner who became a soldier in the Northumberland Fencibles in 1798, rising to the rank of Quartermaster Sergeant in theGrenadier Guards and fought in thePeninsular War and atWaterloo; andJonathan, a preacher tormented by madness who set fire toYork Minster in 1829, for which he stood trial.
Martin began to supplement his income by paintingsepiawatercolours. He sent his first oil painting to theRoyal Academy in 1810, but it was not hung. In 1811 he sent the painting once again, when it was hung under the titleA Landscape Composition as item no.46 in the Great Room. Thereafter, he produced a succession of large exhibited oil paintings: some landscapes, but more usually grand biblical themes inspired by the Old Testament. His landscapes have the ruggedness of the Northumberland crags, while some authors claim that his apocalyptic canvasses, such asThe Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, show his familiarity with the forges and ironworks of theTyne Valley and display his intimate knowledge of theOld Testament.
In the years of theRegency from 1812 onwards there was a fashion for such 'sublime' paintings. Martin's first break came at the end of a season at the Royal Academy, where his first major sublime canvasSadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion had been hung—and ignored. He brought it home, only to find there a visiting card fromWilliam Manning MP, who wanted to buy it from him. Patronage propelled Martin's career.
This promising career was interrupted by the deaths of his father, mother, grandmother and young son in a single year. Another distraction was William, who frequently asked him to draw up plans for his inventions, and whom he always indulged with help and money. But, heavily influenced by the works ofJohn Milton, he continued with his grand themes despite setbacks. In 1816 Martin finally achieved public acclaim withJoshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon, even though it broke many of the conventional rules of composition. In 1818, on the back of the sale of theFall of Babylon for £420 (equivalent to £30,000 in 2015),[5] he finally rid himself of debt and bought a house inMarylebone, where he came into contact with artists, writers, scientists andWhig nobility.
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Martin's triumph wasBelshazzar's Feast (1820), of which he boasted beforehand, "it shall make more noise than any picture ever did before... only don't tell anyone I said so." Five thousand people paid to see it. It was later nearly ruined when the carriage in which it was being transported was struck by a train at alevel crossing nearOswestry.In private, Martin was passionate and devoted to chess, and, like his brothers, to swordsmanship and javelin-throwing. He was also a devout Christian, believing innatural religion. Despite an often cited singular instance of his hissing at the national anthem, he was courted by royalty and presented with several gold medals, one of them from the future Russian TsarNicholas I, on whom a visit toWallsend colliery on Tyneside had made an unforgettable impression: "My God," he had cried, "it is like the mouth of Hell." Martin became the official historical painter toPrince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, later the first King of Belgium. Leopold was the godfather of Martin's son Leopold, and endowed Martin with theOrder of Leopold. Martin frequently had early morning visits from another Saxe-Coburg, Prince Albert, who would engage him in banter from his horse—Martin standing in the doorway still in his dressing gown—at seven o'clock in the morning. Martin was a defender ofdeism and natural religion, evolution (beforeCharles Darwin) and rationality.Georges Cuvier became an admirer of Martin's, and he increasingly enjoyed the company of scientists, artists and writers—Charles Dickens,Michael Faraday andJ. M. W. Turner among them. Between 1849 and 1853, Martin took a home near Turner inChelsea, London.[6]
Martin began to experiment withmezzotint technology, and as a result was commissioned to produce 24 engravings for a new edition ofParadise Lost—perhaps the definitive illustrations of Milton's masterpiece, of which copies now fetch many hundreds of pounds. Politically his sympathies are not clear; some claim he was a radical, but this is not borne out by known facts, although he knewWilliam Godwin, the ageing reformed revolutionist, husband ofMary Wollstonecraft and father ofMary Shelley; and John Hunt, co-founder ofThe Examiner.
At one time the Martins took under their wing a young woman calledJane Webb, who at twenty producedThe Mummy! a socially optimistic but satirical vision of a steam-driven world in the 22nd century. Another friend wasCharles Wheatstone, professor of physics at King's College, London. Wheatstone experimented with telegraphy and invented the concertina and stereoscope; Martin was fascinated by his attempts to measure the speed of light. Accounts of Martin's evening parties reveal an astonishing array of thinkers, eccentrics and social movers; one witness was a youngJohn Tenniel—later the illustrator ofLewis Carroll's work—who was heavily influenced by Martin and was a close friend of his children. At various points Martin's brothers were also among the guests, their eccentricities and conversation adding to the already exotic flavour of the fare.
His first exhibited subject picture,Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion (now in theSt. Louis Art Museum), was hung in the Ante-room of theRoyal Academy in 1812, and sold for fifty guineas. The piece depicts a scene from theTales of Two Genii. It was followed by theExpulsion (1813),Adam's First Sight of Eve (1813),Clytie (1814),Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon (1816) andThe Fall of Babylon (1819). In 1820 appeared hisBelshazzar's Feast, which excited much favourable and hostile comment, and was awarded a prize of £200 at theBritish Institution, where theJoshua had previously carried off a premium of £100. Then cameThe Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum (1822),The Creation (1824),The Eve of the Deluge (1840), and a series of other Biblical and imaginative subjects.[3]The Plains of Heaven is thought by some to reflect his memories of theAllendale of his youth.
Martin's large paintings were closely connected with contemporarydioramas or panoramas, popular entertainments in which large painted cloths were displayed, and animated by the skilful use of artificial light. Martin has often been claimed as a forerunner of the epic cinema, and there is no doubt that the pioneer directorD. W. Griffith was aware of his work."[7] In turn, the diorama makers borrowed Martin's work, to the point of plagiarism. A 2,000-square-foot (190 m2) version ofBelshazzar's Feast was mounted at a facility called the British Diorama in 1833; Martin tried, but failed, to shut down the display with a court order. Another diorama of the same picture was staged in New York City in 1835. These dioramas were tremendous successes with their audiences, but wounded Martin's reputation in the serious art world.[8] The paintingThe Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, 1852 is currently at theLaing Art Gallery inNewcastle upon Tyne.
Following their exhibition at theRoyal Academy of Arts in 1841,Pandæmonium, picturing a scene fromParadise Lost, andThe Celestial City and the River of Bliss were bought by civil and mechanical engineerBenjamin Hick. After Hick's death, in 1842, the two paintings were auctioned by Thomas Winstanley & Sons ofLiverpool at the Exchange Gallery inManchester, in February 1843.[9][10][11][12]Pandæmonium and its frame designed by Martin[13] can be seen at theLouvre.
In addition to being a painter, John Martin was amezzotint engraver. For significant periods of his life, he earned more from his engravings than his paintings. In 1823, Martin was commissioned by Samuel Prowett to illustrateJohn Milton'sParadise Lost, for which he was paid 2,000 guineas. Before the first 24 engravings were completed he was paid a further 1500 guineas for a second set of 24 engravings on smaller plates. Some of the more notable prints includePandæmonium andSatan Presiding at the Infernal Council, remarkable for the science fiction element visible in the depicted architecture, and arguably his most dramatic compositionBridge over Chaos. Prowett issued 4 separate editions of the engravings in monthly instalments, the first appearing on 20 March 1825 and the last in 1827. Later, inspired by Prowett's venture, between 1831 and 1835 Martin published his own illustrations to accompany the Old Testament but the project was a serious drain on his resources and not very profitable. He sold his remaining stock to Charles Tilt who republished them in a folio album in 1838 and in a smaller format in 1839.
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His profile was raised further in February 1829 when his elder brother, non-conformistJonathan Martin, deliberately set fire toYork Minster. The fire caused extensive damage and the scene was likened by an onlooker to Martin's work, oblivious to the fact that it had more to do with him than it initially seemed. Jonathan Martin's defence at his trial was paid for with John Martin's money. Jonathan Martin, known as "Mad Martin", was ultimately found guilty but was spared the hangman's noose on the grounds of insanity.
Martin from about 1827 to 1828 had turned away from painting, and became involved with many engineering plans and inventions. He developed a fascination with solving London's water and sewage problems, and published various pamphlets and plans dealing with the metropolitan water supply, sewage, dock and railway systems.[3] His ideas involved the creation of theThames embankment, containing a central drainage system. His plans were visionary, and formed the basis for later engineers' designs. His 1834 plans for London's sewerage system anticipated by some 25 years the 1859 proposals ofJoseph Bazalgette to create intercepting sewers complete with walkways along both banks of the River Thames. He also made plans for railway schemes, including lines on both banks of the Thames. The plans, along with ideas for "laminating timber", lighthouses, and draining islands, all survive. Martin's upbringing near one of Britain's most active centers ofcoal mining led to a life-long interest in theinfrastructure and safety of mining.[14]
Debt and family pressures, including the suicide of his nephew (Jonathan's son Richard), brought on depression, which reached its worst in 1838.
From 1839 Martin's fortunes recovered and he exhibited many works during the 1840s. During the last four years of his life Martin was engaged in a trilogy of large paintings of biblical subjects:The Last Judgment,The Great Day of His Wrath, andThe Plains of Heaven, of which two were bequeathed toTate Britain in 1974, the other having been acquired for the Tate some years earlier. They were completed in 1853, just before the stroke which paralysed his right side. He was never to recover and died on 17 February 1854, atDouglas, Isle of Man. He is buried inKirk Braddan cemetery.[15] Major exhibitions of his works are still mounted.
Martin enjoyed immense popularity and his influence survived. One of his followers wasThomas Cole, founder of American landscape painting. Others whose imaginations were fired by him included Ralph Waldo Emerson and theBrontës – a print ofBelshazzar's Feast hung on the parlour wall of the Brontë parsonage inHaworth, and his works were to have a direct influence upon the writings of Charlotte and her sisters, who as children played with a model of him. Martin's fantasy architecture influenced the Glasstown and Angria of the Brontë juvenilia, where he himself appears as Edward de Lisle of Verdopolis.
Martin enjoyed a European reputation and influence.Heinrich Heine wrote of the music ofHector Berlioz that "It makes me see visions of fabulous empires and many a cloud-capped, impossible wonder. Its magical strains conjure up Babylon, the hanging gardens of Semiramis, the marvels of Nineveh, the mighty constructions of Mizraim, as we see them in the pictures of the English painter Martin."[16]
Martin's work influenced thePre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – especiallyDante Gabriel Rossetti, and several generations of movie-makers, fromD. W. Griffith, who borrowed his Babylon from Martin, toCecil B. DeMille andGeorge Lucas. Writers likeRider Haggard,Jules Verne, andH. G. Wells were influenced by his concept of the sublime. The French Romantic movement, in both art and literature, was inspired by him. Much Victorian railway architecture was copied from his motifs, including his friend Brunel'sClifton Suspension Bridge. A number of Martin's engineering plans for London which included a circular connecting railway, though they failed to be built in his lifetime, came to fruition many years later. This would have pleased him inordinately – he is known to have exclaimed to his son, Leopold, that he would rather have been an engineer than painter.[17]
Like some other popular artists, Martin fell victim to changes in fashion and public taste. His grandiose visions seemed theatrical and outmoded to the mid-Victorians, and after Martin died his works became neglected and gradually forgotten. "Few artists have been subject to such posthumous extremes of critical fortune, for in the 1930s his vast paintings fetched only a pound or two, while today they are valued at many thousands."[8]
In the 1930s and 1940s his work again came to be appreciated. Connections between his dramatic style and the arts and culture of the historically charged post-war period in Britain has been assessed by Anguix-Vilches who sees post-World War II enthusiasm for depictions of the Apocalypse as allowing Martin's work to survive.[18]
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A number of Martin's works survive in public collections: theLaing Art Gallery in Newcastle – which also holds his famous "black cabinet" of projects in progress;Tate Britain, theVictoria & Albert Museum, theLouvre, theNational Gallery of Art inWashington, D.C.,Yale Center for British Art,Saint Louis Art Museum and elsewhere in the USA. The RIBA holds many of his engineering pamphlets. There are letters in private collections and at Queen Mary College in London. John Martin wrote two autobiographies, the first an article inThe Athenaeum of 14 June 1834, page 459 and the most extensive inThe Illustrated London News, 17 March 1849, pp. 176–177. A major source for his life is a series of reminiscences by his son Leopold, published in sixteen parts in theNewcastle Weekly Chronicle in 1889. There are a number of surviving letters and reminiscences by, among others,B.R. Haydon,John Constable,Ralph Waldo Emerson, theRossettis,Benjamin Disraeli,Charlotte Brontë andJohn Ruskin – a persistent critic who, even so, admitted Martin's uniqueness of vision. The first full biography was that by Mary L. Pendered whose chief source, Martin's friend Sergeant Ralph Thomas, wrote a diary – now lost – of their friendship.Thomas Balston then wrote two biographies on the artist, the first in 1934, and the second (still the leading biography) in 1947. Christopher Johnstone produced an introductory book on Martin 1974, and in 1975 the art criticWilliam Feaver was author of an extensively illustrated work on Martin's life and works. Since 1986, Michael J. Campbell has produced a number of publications on John Martin, including the leading publication on his work as an original printmaker, published by the Royal Academy of Arts, Madrid, in 2006.
In 2011–12 Tate Britain and Newcastle'sLaing Art Gallery co-curated a major retrospective exhibition of Martin's work in all genres -"John Martin – Apocalypse" – including his contribution as a civil engineer.[19] Featured in the exhibition was the fully restoredThe Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, 1822. Recorded as lost in the disastrous Tate Galleryflood of 1928, the painting was rediscovered by Christopher Johnstone, a research assistant at the gallery, when he was researching his bookJohn Martin (1974). Its restoration by Tate conservator Sarah Maisey, reveals that the original paintwork was in near pristine condition; a large area of missing canvas has been repainted by Maisey using techniques that were not available in 1973 as she describes on page 113 of the exhibition catalogueJohn Martin: Apocalypse (2011). When rediscovered the painting was rolled up inside the missingPaul Delaroche paintingThe Execution of Lady Jane Grey which was returned to the National Gallery, London.
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With his wife Susan, née Garrett, who was nine years older than him, Martin had six children who survived to adulthood: Alfred (who worked with his father as a mezzotint engraver and later became a senior tax official), Isabella, Zenobia (who married the artistPeter Cunningham), Leopold (who became a clerk), Charles (1820–1906), who was trained as a painter by his father, copying a number of his father's works – he later became a successful portrait painter and lived in America, his last exhibit at the Royal Academy being in 1896 – and Jessie (who married EgyptologistJoseph Bonomi). Leopold was the godson of the futureKing Leopold I of Belgium, who had met and befriended Martin when they shared lodgings onMarylebone High Street in about 1815. Leopold later wrote a series of reminiscences of his father, published in theNewcastle Weekly Chronicle Supplement in 1889. Leopold accompanied his father on many walks and visits, and his anecdotes include encounters withJ. M. W. Turner,Isambard Kingdom Brunel,William Godwin andCharles Wheatstone. Leopold married the sister ofJohn Tenniel, later famous as the cartoonist ofPunch and illustrator ofAlice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Martin's eldest brother,William (1772–1851) was by turn a rope-maker, soldier, inventor, scientist, writer and lecturer, who attempted to develop a rival philosophy to "Newtonian" science, allowing for perpetual motion, and denying the law of gravity. Despite undoubted elements of "quackery and buffoonery", William had a great talent for inventing. In 1819 he produced a miner's safety lamp which was said to be better and more reliable than that of SirHumphry Davy. The only recognition he achieved in this field was a silver medal from the Royal Society for the invention of the spring balance. The second eldest brother, Richard, was aquartermaster in the guards, serving throughout thePeninsular War, and was present atWaterloo.Jonathan, the third eldest brother, (1782–1838) achieved notoriety by setting fire toYork Minster in February 1829. He was subsequently apprehended, tried and found not guilty on the grounds of insanity. He was confined toSt Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in London, where he remained until his death.[15]
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Martin, John".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 794.
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