THE ART OF CONRAD MARTENS 



I have already noted that Conrad Martens drew the bole of the 

 gum with care and love, and, in his middle-distances, he did 

 generalize its form with sufficient character ; but I feel that he is 

 happier when he does not bring the tree, thus treated, into his 

 near foreground. This does not in any way affect his status as a 

 landscape artist. Claude employed a generalized tree shape, let 

 Ruskin rate him for it as he will ; and Turner invented a tree 

 formula, employing dark mass and delicate receding greys to 

 epitomize that tree depth so difficult to render, and in actuality 

 conquered by the divine Corot alone. As for our own Hilder, 

 much as he loved the beauty of all trees, he failed to render their 

 individual character. 



Roughly speaking, there have been three great schools of land- 

 scape, the Classic, the Romantic, and the Realistic the purely 

 Impressionist school we can neglect for the moment as beside the 

 issue in considering Martens' work. The Classic style composes 

 by noble mass and line, the Romantic depends for its magic upon 

 colour and chiaroscuro, and the Realistic, whether it be the fine 

 truth of Ruysdael or the slavish imitation of Holman Hunt, de- 

 pends upon a close rendering of " things seen." '-If one puts aside 

 much of Martens' work which, from the exigency of commis- 

 sions, is of purely topographical interest, it will be seen that his 

 best is plainly influenced by the classical ideal. True it is that the 

 Turnerian tradition plays here an unmistakable part ; but how was 

 he to escape that dominating influence of his time ? Turner not 

 only overtopped and crushed his contemporaries, but established 

 a genre in landscape, half art, half topography, which charmed a 

 vast public through the medium of engraving. Turn to any of 

 the landscape engraving done between the twenties and fifties of 

 the nineteenth century, and you will see not only that Turner 

 swayed the topographers of his day, but that his long rule over 

 the style of engraving reduced his contemporaries' work for the 

 burin to one great common Turnerian denominator. He trained 

 his engravers to see the " lights," who hitherto had comprehended 

 only the dark end of the scale ; to render delicate distances, the 

 sparkle and brilliancy, which are so aptly rendered by the graven 

 line. That great school of landscape engraving founded and 



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