THE ART OF CONRAD MARTENS 



cold. In his finer moments he attained a singleness of effect, and 

 sometimes a rhythm which eludes him when his theme is too 

 complicated. He had a sense of the hieratic relations of the 

 parts of a picture ; had not the pleasure of patrons demanded a 

 bread-and-butter consideration, I believe he would have avoided 

 that " finish " and accumulation of details which was of the spirit 

 of his age and sanctified by the great Turner. Simplicity and the 

 sacrifice of the inessential are revealed in his Sydney from Vaucluse, 

 Dawn, Moonlight, and The Hartley Stockade. These contain that 

 three-fourths of tradition whose remainder, according to Charles 

 Whibley, is the quantum of permissible originality in all great art. 

 Traditionalist, conformist in art as in religion, Conrad Martens 

 was content with Nature's help to make his personal offering to 

 Beauty content also to do his best in despite of hard times and 

 scanty patronage. To this integrity of mind his pencil drawings 

 bear witness : precise, straightforward, honest, recalling inevitably 

 the dictum of the great Ingres " Drawing is the probity of art." 



