THE ART OF CONRAD MARTENS 



from the standpoint of design and draughtsmanship, of chiaro- 

 scuro and harmony. Then, if we have any love for that monu- 

 ment of the art of landscape engraving, the England and Wales of 

 Turner, we shall surely find a niche in our hearts for the work of 

 Conrad Martens. 



The nineteenth century is strewn with the wreckage of artistic 

 wars. With the French Revolution passed not merely the old 

 traditional monarchy but the old traditional painting : and, as 

 upon the one, so upon the other followed wars and riots. The 

 struggles between Science and Religion were accompanied by 

 as many battles for artistic beliefs ; even to-day the Realist would 

 burn William Blake and Turner at the stake, and the Pre- 

 Raphaelite regards the Impressionist as the Beast from the Pit, 

 while the Impressionist looks upon his adversary much as would 

 great Falstaff upon all who would banish good honest sack. As for 

 the Futurist, who is the Bolshevist in Art, he flings his stupid dyna- 

 mite with the impartial tolerance of a madman, and would immo- 

 late them all. 



In this nook of the Antipodes Conrad Martens hardly took 

 note of these wars and rumours of wars : he had to settle down to 

 the earning of a livelihood, and the difficulties of handling an alien 

 landscape in which he had neither guide nor exemplar. That he 

 did not succeed in mastering the gum-tree is not to his discredit, for 

 the problem could not be solved by his method. He learned to 

 draw the trunk and generalized shape of the tree, but he did not 

 perceive what it took the combined genius of a Heysen and a 

 Streeton to resolve that the gum is visually aflat tree and, un- 

 like the oak or fir, has little volume ; that its character lies 

 in silhouette, in the true generalization of its mass, and not in 

 shifting light and shadow. Realism alone could analyse those 

 greys and bronzes, that metallic sheen and play of light on pen- 

 dant leaves : and Martens was not a realist. 



The characteristics of a new land are not to be learned in 

 a generation, for the eye of the immigrant will be caught by the 

 unfamiliar, the unexpected, not by that which is general to the 

 country. The bottle-tree, the " blackboy," the fern-tree gully, the 

 cabbage-palm were seized upon by our colonizing fathers in art as 



24 



