Date: c. 1817
Technique: Oil on canvas, 127 x 101.6 cm
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Showing posts with label John Martin (1789-1854). Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Martin (1789-1854). Show all posts
7/7/19
5/9/19
John Martin, The fall of Babylon; Cyrus the Great defeating the Chaldean army
Date: 1831, after himself, 1819
Technique: Mezzotint, with watercolour
7/16/17
John Martin, The City of God and the Waters of Life
Technique: Oil on canvas, 46 x 66 cm
3/30/15
John Martin, Destruction of Tyre
Date: 1840
Technique: Oil on canvas, 838 x 1095 mm
1/24/15
John Martin, Moonlight - Chepstow Castle
Date: 1815
Technique: Watercolour
4/7/13
John Martin, Fallen Angels in Hell
Date: c. 1841
Technique: Oil on canvas, 61 x 76 cm
10/19/11
John Martin, The Last Judgement
Tate Gallery, London
Date: 1853
Technique: Oil on canvas, 1968 x 3258 mm
This picture illustrates the central event of the book of Revelation. On a throne in the heavens sits Christ in judgement, surrounded by the four and twenty elders. Below on the right the forces of evil, commanded by Satan, are defeated and tumble into a bottomless pit. To the left on Mount Zion are ‘the good’, already in ‘the plains of heaven’ and awaiting the call to appear before the throne. Martin included a high percentage of artists and poets among the good; these were identified (as were many of the evil characters) in a chart which he published to accompany the picture.
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10/11/11
John Martin, The Fall of Babylon
Date: 1830
Technique: Mezzotint with etching, 46.7 x 72 cm
John Martin (1789-1854) first interpreted the biblical scene of the destruction of Babylon in a huge painting exhibited at the British Institution in 1819.
He was keen to make prints after his paintings, as a 'means which would enable the public to see my productions, and give me a chance of being remunerated for my labours'. Martin did not see his prints just as commercial reproductions, but as works of art in their own right. He took personal responsibility for every stage of print production. He even inked his own plates, a job which was normally left to specialist printers.
The mezzotint was the ideal medium for creating painterly effects. A metal plate (usually copper but in this case steel) is evenly roughened with a serrated 'rocker' that would print as a dark area if inked up. A design is formed by burnishing down the plate to create smooth areas that print as light tones. This process creates dramatic chiaroscuro (light and shade), which well suited the drama of Martin's apocalyptic subject matter.
The eccentric, English dilettante, William Beckford wrote:
'I have been three times running to the exhibition ... to admire 'The Capture of Babylon' by Martin. He adds the greatest distinction to contemporary art. Oh, what a sublime thing.'
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7/1/11
John Martin, Manfred On The Jungfrau
Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery
Date: 1837
Technique: Watercolour, gouache and applied gum arabic, 384 x 575 mm
Romantic artists and writers were fascinated by the relationship of man to nature and this was frequently expressed through the image of figures on clifftops. Manfred is about to throw himself from the cliff but is restrained by a chamois hunter who leads him to safety. The episode is taken from Act I scene II of Byron's dramatic poem Manfred:
'...And you, ye crags upon whose extreme edge
I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath
Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs
In dizziness of distance, when a leap,
A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring
My breast upon its rocky bosom's bed
To rest for ever - wherefore do I pause?
...Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister,
Whose happy flight is highest into heaven,
Well may'st thou swoop so near me...
...How beautiful is all this visible world!
How glorious in its action and itself!'
Presented by A E Anderson, 1922.
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John Martin, Manfred and the Witch of the Alps
Date:1837
Technique: Watercolor and bodycolor
Martin exhibited this watercolor and its companion, Manfred on the Jungfrau (now in the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery), at the Society of British Artists in 1838. Both watercolors illustrate episodes from Byron's romantic poem Manfred, which was published in 1817. The poem describes the suffering and eventual death of the sorcerer Manfred, who is punished for his dealings in the black arts by being unable to find rest. After an attempt at suicide (which is illustrated in the Birmingham drawing), Manfred visits the Witch of the Alps, who says that if he surrenders to her will and gives her his soul she will help him achieve rest. But Manfred refuses. The shadowy figure to the right of Manfred in the watercolor is not a change of heart on the part of the artist, but Manfred's soul, with which he is considering parting.
Both watercolors were painted at a time of desperation in the artist's life, as financial crisis loomed. In autumn 1837 Martin wrote to a friend: "I feel myself a ruined, crushed man.... There are no more bright days in store for me." The Whitworth drawing and its Birmingham pendant show Martin identifying with the suffering of Byron's romantic hero and rising above his crises to present an intensely sublime Alpine landscape, an area which he had never actually visited.
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5/26/11
John Martin, Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion
Saint Louis Art Museum
Date: 1812
Technique: Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 63.5 cm
Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion is an 1812 oil painting by John Martin. It has been called "The most famous of the British romantic works...;" it was the first of Martin's characteristically dramatic, grand, grandiose large pictures, and anchored the development of the style for which Martin would become famous.
The painting shows a tiny human figure climbing in a mountain landscape. The man struggles to surmount a rocky outcrop beside a pool and waterfall; more jagged cliffs and peaks loom in the background, vastly receding.
Martin later stated that he finished the work in a month. And he wrote, "You may easily guess my anxiety when I overheard the men who were to place it in the frame disputing as to which was the top of the picture! Hope almost forsook me, for much depended on this work." (At the time, Martin had left his £2-per-week job as a glass painter in a china factory, and was attempting to establish himself as an independent artist.)
The artist's anxiety was unnecessary; displayed in the Royal Academy exhibition at Somerset House, the picture was a popular success. It was purchased for fifty guineas by William Manning, a member of the board of governors of the Bank of England. Reportedly, the Manning's "dying son had been moved by its depiction of the slight solitary figure clinging perilously to a ledge."
"What makes the work so remarkable is its persuasive combination of science and fantasy: while the scale seems beyond terrestrial experience, the attention given to geological and meteorological phenomena is that of the knowledgeable observer." Critics who accept the conventions of Romanticism in art have appreciated Martin's Sadak; those who do not have regarded the picture as lurid or puzzling.
Sadak is a fictional character in a story in James Ridley's Tales of the Genii (two volumes, 1764); it is a faux-Oriental tale allegedly from a Persian manuscript, but actually the work of Ridley himself. In Ridley's story, the hero Sadak is sent by his Sultan, Amurath, to find the memory-destroying "waters of oblivion." The Sultan maliciously intends to use the waters on Sadak's wife Kalasrade in a seduction attempt. Sadak endures a range of trials — a tempest at sea, a plague, evil genii, a subterranean whirlpool — before he attains his goal. In the end, the Sultan himself falls victim to the water's effect. Amurath dies; Sadak becomes Sultan. Martin's picture portrays Sadak at the climax of his struggle, just before he reaches the waters of oblivion.
(Ridley's tale was popular in its era, and was adapted into a play by Thomas John Dibdin, titled Sadak and Kalasrade, which was staged in 1797. Henry Bishop mounted an operatic version in 1814.)
The picture was reproduced as a steel-plate etching in 1828. The print bore a poem on the same subject, "Sadak the Wanderer," which was attributed by some to Percy Bysshe Shelley. Modern editors of Shelley are skeptical.
With this and his subsequent paintings, Martin gained a reputation for replicating the effects of stained glass on canvas. He employed a strong "chemical red" hue to express volcanic landscapes.
For many years the painting was known only in a reduced version in the Southampton Art Gallery. The full-size original was discovered in Sweden and acquired by the Saint Louis Art Museum in 1983.
Martin followed Sadak with Adam's First Sight of Eve (1813) and Clytie (1814), both shown at the Royal Academy.
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1/28/11
John Martin, Paradise Lost - Adam and Eve Driven out of Paradise (Book 12)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Date: 1824-1827
Technique: Mezzotint with etching and drypoint on laid paper, 25.4 x 35.3 cm
They loooking back, all the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat.
Waved over by that flaming brand the gate
With dreadful faces thronged, and firey arms
Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
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John Martin, Paradise Lost - Heaven - The Rivers of Bliss (Book 11)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Date: 1824-1825
Technique: Mezzotint with etching and drypoint on laid paper, 25.1 x 35.6 cm
...The angelick blast
Filled all the regions; from their blissful bowers
Of amarantine shade, fountain or spring,
By the waters of life, where 'er they sat
In fellowships of joy, the sons of light
Hasted, resorting to the summons high;
And took their seats, till from his throne supreme
The Almighty thus pronounced his sovran will...
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John Martin, Paradise Lost - Adam Reproving Eve (Book 10)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Date: 1824-1826
Technique: Mezzotint with etching on wove paper, 25.6 x 35.3 cm
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John Martin, Paradise Lost - Bridge over Chaos (Book 10)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Date: 1824-1826
Technique: Mezzotint on laid paper, 25.2 x 34.6 cm
...to Hell he now returned
And at the brink of Chaos, near the foot
Of this new wonderous pontifice, the unhoped
Met, to whom meet him came, his offspring dear.
...
Of that stupendous bridge his joy encreased.
Long he admiring stood, till Sin, his fair
Enchanting daughter, thus the silence broke...
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John Martin, Paradise Lost - Adam Hearing the Voice of the Almighty (Book 10)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Date: 1824-1826
Technique: Mezzotint with etching on laid paper, 25.7 x 35.8 cm
...And from his presence hid themselves among
The thickest trees, both man and wife, till God,
Approaching, thus to Adam called aloud:
Where are thou Adam, ... / ... Come forth!
He came; and with him Eve, more both, though first
To offend: discountenanced both, and discomposed;
Love was not in their looks, either to God;
Or to each other; but apparent guilt,
And shame, and perturbation, and despair,
Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guilt.
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John Martin, Paradise Lost - Eve Presenting the Forbidden Fruit to Adam (Book 9)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Date: 1824
Technique: Mezzotint with etching on laid paper, 25.4 x 35.8 cm
...from the bough
She gave him of that fair enticing fruit
With liberal hand: he scurpled not to eat.
Against his better knowledge: not deceived,
But fondly overcome with female charm.
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John Martin, Paradise Lost - Satan Tempting Eve (Book 9 )
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Date: 1824-1826
Technique: Mezzotint with etching and drypoint on laid paper, 25.4 x 35.1 cm
Here grows the cure of all, this fruit divine,
Fair on the eye, inviting to the taste,
Of virtue to make wise: What hinders then
To reach and feed at once both body and mind?
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat!
Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe,
That all was lost.
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John Martin, Paradise Lost - Creation of Light (Book 7)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Date: 1824
Technique: Mezzotint on laid paper, 25.4 x 35.3 cm
One of Martin's masterpieces, and a highpoint of the Paradise Lost series, Martin depicts the moment when God creates the Light of Heaven, and divides the Night from the Day.
Martin produced an oil painting of The Creation of Light at the same time as the two mezzotints for Paradise Lost; the oil painting is now lost. But when it was shown in 1825. Martin received quite a bit of criticism from those who were outraged to find God depicted at all. One review dismissed the painting as "absurd beyond all conception," and another commentator found it "the grossest of all gross ideas to make the power and essence of the Creator depend on size." Martin was not dissuaded -- indeed was probably more encouraged by the fact the painting was sold for 2000 guineas, the highest price he ever received for a single work -- and used the same image in Paradise Lost. Opinion was soon to change, so that by the early 1900s the work was described as "one of the most extraordinary conceptions of a great visionary."
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