John Martin (painter)
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Image:John Martin 001.jpg Image:JMartin7thPlague1828.jpg John Martin (July 19, 1789–February 17, 1854), English painter, was born at Haydon Bridge, near Hexham. He was apprenticed by his father to a coachbuilder in Newcastle upon Tyne to learn heraldic painting, but owing to a quarrel the indentures were cancelled, and he was placed under Bonifacio Musso, an Italian artist, father of the enamel painter Charles Musso. With his master, Martin removed from Newcastle to London in 1806, where he married at the age of nineteen, and supported himself by giving drawing lessons, and by painting in water colors, and on china and glass. His leisure was occupied in the study of perspective and architecture.
His first exhibited subject picture, Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion (now in the Southampton Art Gallery)), was hung in the Ante-room of the Royal Academy in 1812, and sold for fifty guineas. It was followed by the Expulsion (1813), Paradise (1813), Clytie (1814), and Joshua (1815). In 1821 appeared his Belshazzar's Feast, which excited much favorable and hostile comment, and was awarded a prize of £200 at the British Institution, where the Joshua had previously carried off a premium of £100. Then came the Destruction of Herculaneum (1822), the Creation (1824), the Eve of the Deluge (1841), and a series of other Biblical and imaginative subjects. The Plains of Heaven is thought to reflect his memories of the Allendale of his youth.
In addition to being a painter, John Martin was a major mezzotint engraver and for significant periods of his life he earned more from his engravings than his paintings. In 1823, Martin was commissioned by Samuel Prowett, an American publisher, to illustrate Paradise Lost by John Milton, for which he was paid 2000 pounds. However, before the first 24 engravings were completed he was paid a further 1500 pounds for a second set of 24 engravings on smaller plates. Prowett issued 4 separate editions of the engravings in monthly installments, 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 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.
Martin ejoyed immense popularity and a print of Belshazzar's Feast hung on the parlour wall of the Bronte vicarage in Haworth, where Charlotte and Branwell copied Martin's works. Martin's fantasy architecture influenced the Glasstown and Angria of the Bronte juvenilia, where he himself appears as Edward de Lisle of Verdopolis.
He was also occupied with schemes for the improvement of London, and published various pamphlets and plans dealing with the metropolitan water supply, sewerage, dock and railway systems (his 1834 plans for London's sewerage system anticipated by some 25 years the 1859 proposals of Joseph Bazalgette to create interceptory sewers complete with walkways along both banks of the River Thames).
During the last four years of his life Martin was engaged upon a tryptich of very large biblical subjects: The Last Judgment, The Great Day of His Wrath, and The Plains of Heaven. The paintings were bequeathed to Tate Britain in 1974. Martin suffered an attack of paralysis while painting and died on the Isle of Man.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition{{#if:{{{article|}}}| article {{#if:{{{url|}}}|[{{{url|}}}}} "{{{article}}}"{{#if:{{{url|}}}|]}}{{#if:{{{author|}}}| by {{{author}}}}}}}, a publication now in the public domain. John Martin, Christopher Johnstone, Academy Editions, London, 1974 ISBN 856701750