THE ART OF CONRAD MARTENS 



WHEN Tom Girtin destroyed the mean tradition of the 

 tinted monotone by bringing in the direct method of 

 laying a wash of colour truly in its place, he had dis- 

 covered a new art the English art of water-colour. 

 English it was in origin, English it has remained in practice ; for 

 in vain do we look abroad for any master, outside the brilliant 

 Spaniard, Fortuny, who comes within coo-ee of our own. Girtin, 

 Turner, Cotman, De Wint, Cox, Barrett, and Copley Fielding ex- 

 ploited all the possibilities of the medium, and in Turner's Battle 

 of Fort Rocl^, exhibited at the Academy in 1815, may be seen 

 practically every method of handling used to-day. All these great 

 English masters were born between 1775 and 1 790, and Conrad 

 Martens came into a world of art still astir with their discoveries. 



It must have been predilection that took Martens for tuition to 

 Copley Fielding, for his attachment to nature, and a certain turn of 

 elegance in his style, indicate some affinity of taste ; this, rather 

 than the persistence of a master's influence, which a genuine 

 artist must have in the course of his evolution modified and 

 absorbed into a personal style. 



Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding, for many years President of 

 the Old Water-colour Society, was a pleasant and courtly gentle- 

 man a kind of minor Sir Thomas Lawrence. He was successful 

 early, and remained so to the end of his life ; but alas for instant 

 popularity ! his work is not esteemed so highly now as in his 

 own day. Ruskin rates him for not studying sufficiently with his 

 pencil, and for trusting to the virtuosity of his brush a fault of 

 which his pupil was never guilty. " Fielding's professional life," 

 says old Roget,* " was spent in sketching, painting in the studio, 

 and giving lessons to pupils. But the last two of these occupa- 

 tions engrossed more of his time than of theirs ; for, sooth to say, 

 a large class, though not nearly all, of Fielding's works, beautiful 

 as they were, had the air more of models of art than guides to 

 * Roget, Hislory of the Old Walcr-colour Society, vol. 2, p. 74. 



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