THE LIFE OF CONRAD MARTENS 



OF the parentage and birth of Conrad Martens we know 

 just this much, that his father was a Hamburg merchant 

 settled and married in England, and that he was born 

 in the parish of the Crutched Friars, near the Tower, in 

 the year 1801. 



He had two brothers, Henry and J. W. (the initials alone de- 

 scend to us), and a sister, Mary Ann. The brothers Martens, like 

 the Fieldings, all became artists. Henry was known as " Battle 

 Martens," from his subjects pitched amidst " the noise of the 

 captains and the shouting." The only work by him that I have 

 seen is a French landscape, with some figures and a chateau, well 

 drawn and delicately washed, but revealing no particular individu- 

 ality ; if it is representative of his work, then Conrad far out- 

 paced him. The other brother, J. W., made a fine lithograph of a 

 mill at Exmouth, from a water-colour by Conrad they probably 

 contemplated a series of Devonshire Views and in a letter to 

 Henry, in '49, Conrad writes : "I am glad J. W. M. is doing 

 well. It would be hard indeed if none of us should succeed." 



Though it is mere conjecture, I conclude from the tone of his 

 letters and the quality of his mind that Conrad Martens received 

 a good conventional education. Church and State are written 

 large upon his thought. Precise, discreet, reticent, he preserves 

 the ideal of the gentleman. Everything suggests that he enjoyed 

 a good middle class home. That the father permitted his three 

 sons to engage in the hazardous business of art speaks either for 

 his indulgence or for his breadth of mind. 



Conrad chose for his master Copley Fielding, the most fashion- 

 able teacher of the day, under whose tuition he laid the foundations 

 of his style. Until 1837 Fielding's studio was at No. 26 Newman 

 Street, and there Martens first learnt the mystery of washing-in a 

 drawing. In his Lecture upon Landscape Painting,* delivered at the 

 Australian Library in 1 856, Martens not only gives us his concept 

 of art, with many practical hints for its realization, but names the 

 * MS. in Mitchell Library, Sydney. 



