THE LIFE OF CONRAD MARTENS 



He was early alive to the landscape interest about him, "minut- 

 ing," as Horace Walpole has it, all points of interest that he 

 happened upon. The habit of the topographer and the necessity 

 of preparing work for a very hypothetical market soon drove him 

 afield. As early as 1835 he was in the Illawarra, drawing with a 

 meticulous touch all that sub-tropical forest growth of tangled 

 lianas, great fronded ferns and graceful cabbage-palms which 

 attracted the romantic Englishman in him, and which, on paper, 

 wears so much the appearance of a transformation scene. The 

 exotic was ever the poorest material for art : it is only the things 

 we understand, woven in the texture of our lives, that can make 

 a true appeal to our emotions. 



In those good conservative times no young lady's education was 

 considered finished unless she had taken lessons in drawing, 

 acquired the Fielding touch for trees, and learnt to decorate the 

 albums of her friends with insipid reminiscences of the " Keep- 

 sake." So Martens set up shop to instruct those " over whom 

 time spent was time lost." His advertisement in the Sydney 

 Herald says that he "will be happy to give instructions in the 

 different branches of Landscape Painting, Sketching, etc. Terms 

 may be known and specimens seen at the artist's residence, 

 Cumberland Street, near the Fort." 



Ah, those poor drawing masters ! teaching stupid fingers to 

 make copies of their own works, and retouching the poor effort 

 to a likely conclusion, that papa and mamma might dwell with 

 pride on the cleverness of their progeny. Which for the Graces 

 must be served did they consider most essential to the finishing 

 of Miss Drawing Master, Dancing Master, Pianoforte Mistress ? 

 I am afraid, not the Drawing Master. 



French influence has changed our methods of teaching, and 

 to-day our attack is directed straight at nature. In Martens' day 

 the pupil approached it in an indirect way, by copying his 

 master's studies, and when he had acquired sufficient handling 

 that recondite handling so aptly described by Samuel Butler as 

 " the hieroglyph of a lost soul " he was allowed to let fly into 

 the " brown " of nature, before he had learnt the mere A E 1C of 

 observation. 



