England/Australia Painter , 1801-1878 Australian painter, lithographer and librarian of English birth. Son of a London merchant, he studied c. 1816 under Copley Fielding. His training was as a watercolourist and his most important works are watercolours, although he also produced paintings in oils. His early work displays the taste then current for the Picturesque. Francis Danby, David Cox and Turner were artists he admired. Martens left for India in 1832 or 1833 but at Montevideo joined Charles Darwin's expedition, replacing Augustus Earle as topographical draughtsman aboard the Beagle. The work strengthened his observation of detail and skill as a draughtsman. He left the expedition in October 1834 and, travelling via Tahiti and New Zealand, arrived in Sydney in April 1835. There he worked as a professional artist, in the 1840s and 1850s producing lithographic views of the Sydney area to augment his income. In 1863 he was appointed Parliamentary Librarian, which secured his finances. The skills he had acquired aboard the Beagle helped to gain him commissions to depict the estates around Sydney. However, his admiration for Turner, and with this the desire to elevate landscape as a subject, prompted him to subordinate line to mood in a Romantic treatment of the landscape. His thoughts were clearly stated in a lecture on landscape painting given in 1856 at the Australian Library, Sydney (see Smith, 1975).   Related Paintings of Conrad Martens :. | Rio Santa Cruz | Australian Landscape with cattle and a stockman at a creek | Coastal Scene near Exmouth | View from Sandy Bay | Cloud study |
Related Artists:
Gustave Boulanger
(1824-88) was a French figure painter known for his Neo-Grec style. He was born at Paris, studied with Delaroche and Jollivet, and in 1849 took the Prix de Rome. His paintings are prime examples of academic art of the time, particularly history painting. Boulanger had visited Italy, Greece, and North Africa, and his paintings reflect his attention to culturally correct details and skill in rendering the female form. His works include a Moorish Cafe (1848), Cæsar at the Rubicon (1865), the Promenade in the Street of Tombs, Pompeii (1869), and The Slave Market (1888). The recipient of many medals, he became a member of the Institut de France in 1882.
David Cox
David Cox [English Painter, 1783-1859] English painter. After taking drawing lessons from Joseph Barber (1757/8-1811) in Birmingham, Cox worked briefly as an apprentice to a painter of lockets and snuff-boxes named Fieldler. This was followed about 1800 by a longer period painting scenery for the New Theatre, Birmingham. On the promise of similar employment at Astley's Amphitheatre in Lambeth, Cox travelled to London in 1804, but when this came to nothing he decided to make his name as a watercolour painter. He began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1805 and from 1809 until its demise in 1812 with the Associated Artists in Water-Colours, of which he became both member and president in 1810. He was elected an Associate of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1812 and within a month had advanced to full membership.
Bierstadt, Albert
The landscape painter Bierstadt joined a surveying expedition to the western United States in 1858 after studying painting in Germany.