THE ART OF CONRAD MARTENS 



is a singular pleasure to look over the numberless drawings 

 Martens made of distant Sydney : the sureness with which he 

 places each building and tree-mass, and the swiftness of the 

 touch, have an inimitable grace ; and we come to see that in 

 abandoning the pencil (which, it is to be remembered, was Turner's 

 preference) the modern artist has lost much of his power over 

 form and natural perspective. 



I cannot sufficiently praise Conrad Martens' dexterity with the 

 pencil. As a sketcher, he is supreme in swift execution and 

 direction of touch. Mrs. Macarthur Onslow, whom he taught, 

 has left it on record that he never lifted pencil from paper, so 

 quickly did he grip the essentials of any scene. His drawing of 

 distances and middle-distances could not be bettered, so accurately 

 did his eye gauge the lie of the country and the character of hill 

 and valley. There is never the slightest confusion, because he was 

 master of his method, which was to employ four deliberate 

 strengths of line " no hatching, as it is a slow process " and to 

 depend on these for perspective and representation. The advan- 

 tages of such a method are obvious : a fine style results from 

 limitation of means, and the clear study, comprehensive and truth- 

 ful, will leave the artist free to select and amplify when he comes 

 to the final consideration of colour for Martens followed the 

 Turnerian tradition of painting from his pencil drawings, aided 

 by an occasional colour-note and by written memoranda of land- 

 scape " effects." 



Conrad Martens was a product of the thought and taste of the 

 days of his youth. He had by heart Reynolds' Discourses, the 

 Composition and Light and Shade in Painting of John Burnet, and 

 the Landscape Maxims of John Varley ; the Turnerian Elevation of 

 Theme was part of his mental texture, just as we to-day are un- 

 consciously subject to the influences of French landscape. Only 

 when his work is seen in its due relation to those ideas which 

 were his currency can we form a just estimate of his art. In the 

 first place we must dismiss from our minds all exactitudes of value 

 and colouring, and all local colour reactions, and consider his work 



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