THE ART OF CONRAD MARTENS 



goal to be won ; and that atmosphere of the picture of which I 

 have spoken, that skilful disposition of the content within the 

 frame, were the means by which alone illusion could be attained. 



That he sometimes failed by forcing his medium was due to his 

 attempt to make weight of tone do the work of colour ; moreover, 

 he sometimes, in presence of the actual problems as so often 

 happens to any of us forgot the rules of his own aesthetic. 

 And that aesthetic is embodied in the Sydney from Vaucluse 

 which I have come to consider his masterpiece, the key to his 

 intention in landscape. Often as he essayed the theme and 

 charm of light, he never so completely succeeded as in this 

 splendid vision of Sydney Harbour. He has rested here upon a 

 far-off memory of Turner, as Turner had stayed himself upon 

 Claude. Its colour quantities he never equalled in any of 

 his other works, for here the colour sings. The atmosphere of 

 distance is rendered perfectly, the touch is generalized to the 

 requirement of each space and indication of form, the foreground 

 is the most masterly he ever executed. And the subject is one 

 wherein man shall take joy until light and life fail from our 

 planet the setting of the sun across a noble flood of water. 

 The splendour that lies about departing day embodies an un- 

 earthly beauty an irradiation that transfigures all nature like the 

 visible presence of a god, an effulgence as from the wide-flung 

 gates of paradise. For surely here, in such calm glory of intense 

 gold, man, as he brooded enraptured over the miracle of day's 

 decease, may well have come to ponder his own going-hence and 

 dream that, when his own day's light should fade, he too might 

 inherit such palaces of amber light and dwell for ever secure in 

 tranquil halls of vision. 



Grace, balance, the feeling for line, a just eye for the pictorial 

 planes, a delicacy of touch in skies and distances these are the 

 characteristics of Martens' art. His love of Nature was untiring. 

 He was too well-bred to " show off " in her presence, for his mind 

 was grave and self-respecting, and shall I add perhaps a little 



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