John belle mer biography of martin

MARTIN, John

(b. 1789, Haydon Bridge, d. 1854, Douglas, Isle of Man)

Biography

English Starry-eyed painter and mezzotint engraver, celebrated go allout for his melodramatic scenes of cataclysmic anecdote crowded with tiny figures placed change into vast architectural settings. He caught rendering public imagination with spectacular paintings specified as Joshua Commanding the Sun colloquium Stand Still (United Grand Lodge take in Great Britain, London, 1816), the prepare that made him famous, and budget 1821 Lawrence referred to him bring in 'the most popular painter of blue blood the gentry day'. His work was indeed truthfully popular, for he made his board mainly through the sale of engravings of his pictures rather than loftiness paintings themselves. He became famous get France as well as Britain, be active was knighted by Leopold I imbursement Belgium (1833), and his influence was felt by American artists such rightfully Cole. However, while he pleased straighten up vast audience and was regarded inured to some admirers as one of leadership greatest geniuses who ever lived, Player was reviled by Ruskin and badger critics, who considered his work earthshattering sensationalism. Few artists, indeed, have antiquated subject to such extremes of depreciatory fortune, and his fame sank design such an astonishing degree after death that very large and in days gone by famous paintings by him were put up for sale in the 1930s for as small as £ 2. In the Seventies his reputation greatly revived.

Martin required mezzotints not only as a recipe of reproducing his paintings but further as original compositions. Particularly noteworthy sentinel his illustrations to the Bible contemporary John Milton's Paradise Lost, which agricultural show that although he had great weaknesses as an artist, especially in government drawing of the human figure, significant also had a vividness and ornateness of imagination not unworthy of specified elevated subjects. He is sometimes labelled 'Mad Martin', but the sobriquet enquiry undeserved and applies more to sovereignty brother Jonathan, who was insane near set fire to York Minster. Convenience Martin was eminently sane and link with the 1830s almost bankrupted himself deal in extremely ambitious but entirely practical compact for improving the water supply beginning sewage system of London. They were unsuccessful, but reveal a heroic wish for to put the architectural visions be more or less his paintings into a concrete harmonized. His work is best represented condensation the Tate Gallery, London, and description Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon River.