John Martin

John Martin - An English romantic painter

John Martin was a popular English romantic painter who was best known as an author of historical paintings. The best thing about this popular painter is that his main subject for painting was religion. And for the religious subject, he used to make wide numbers of theatrical paintings and fantastic compositions. These paintings were mainly populated with minute figures placed in imposing landscapes. John Martin had a great and successful painting career which he enjoyed to a great extent. 

The early life of John Martin:

John Martin was born on 19th July 1789 in Haydon Bridge, Northumberland, England. This popular painter was also an engraver and illustrator. Due to the best paintings style, John Martin enjoyed great success. This popular English romantic painter was the fourth son of Fenwick Martin, who was a one-time fencing master. In the early stage of his career, John Martin was apprenticed by his father to a coachbuilder in Newcastle upon Tyne. Here he was able to learn heraldic painting. Due to some wages dispute, this popular English romantic painter was placed under an Italian artist, Boniface Musso. 

In the year 1806, Boniface Musso and John Martin together moved from Newcastle to London. At nineteen, this popular English romantic painter got married in London and supported his family by teaching drawing lessons. John Martin made many popular paintings with watercolors and on China glass. To date, one can find one of the painted plates by John Martin in the private collection in England. Being an artist, John Martin begins to supplement his income by painting sepia watercolors. In 1810, he sent his first oil painting to the Royal Academy. This popular artist's main leisure was studying architecture and perspective, where he spent most of his time. 

The painting that John Martin sent to the Royal Academy in 1810 was not hung then again in 1811, and he sent another oil painting in the Royal Academy, which was hung. This painting is hung in the great room under the title A Landscape Composition. John Martin was motivated and started to produce a succession of large exhibited oil paintings, which included landscapes and grand biblical themes. At the end of the Royal Academy, Martin's first break came at the end of a season, where his canvas Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion had been hung. It was his first major sublime canvas. He lost his father, mother, grandmother, and young son in a single year, which interrupted his career. 

 Paintings created by John Martin:

John Martin created many successful paintings like Sadak- In Search of the Waters of Oblivion. This was his first painting that was exhibited and hung in the Ante-room of the Royal Academy. He made many other successful paintings like Belshazzar's Feast, The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, The Creation (1824), the Eve of the Deluge (1840), and a series of other Biblical and imaginative subjects. His paintings were attractive and perfect /for which he was awarded. 

John Martin was also a mezzotint engraver, and for a significant period of his life, he earned more for engraving. He was also commissioned by Samuel Prowett to illustrate John Milton's Paradise Lost and was paid in return. He made many prints which provided him a great source of income. Some of his popular prints were like Pandemonium and Satan Presiding at the Infernal Council. Late in his life, John Martin turned away from paintings and became a part of many plans and inventions. He died at the age of sixty-four on 17th February 1854