Facts concerning him or his work are slight.  Bryan’s dictionary accords him a few paragraphs.  When at the British Museum, a few years ago, I asked Mr. Sidney Colvin about the Martins in his print-room.  There are not many, not so many as in a certain private collection here.  But Mr. Colvin told me of the article written by Cosmo Monkhouse in the Dictionary of National Biography, and from it we are enabled to present a few items about the man’s career.  He was born at Hayden Bridge, near Hexham, Northumberland, July 19, 1789.  His father, Fenwick Martin, a fencing-master, held classes at the Chancellor’s Head, Newcastle.  His brothers, Jonathan (1782-1838) and William (1772-1851), have some claim on our notice, for the first was an insane prophet and incendiary, having set fire to York Minster in 1829; William was a natural philosopher and poet who published many works to prove the theory of perpetual motion.  “After having convinced himself by means of thirty-six experiments of the impossibility of demonstrating it scientifically, it was revealed to him in a dream that God had chosen him to discover the great cause of all things, and this he made the subject of many works” (Jasnot, Verites positives, 1854).  Verily, as Lombroso hath it, “A hundred fanatics are found for a theological or metaphysical statement, but not one for a geometric problem.”

The Martin stock was, without doubt, neurasthenic.  John was apprenticed when fourteen to Wilson, a Newcastle coach painter, but ran away after a dispute over wages.  He met Bonifacio Musso, an Italian china painter, and in 1806 went with him to London.  There he supported himself painting china and glass while he studied perspective and architecture.  At nineteen he married and in 1812 lived in High Street, Marylebone, and from there sent to the Academy his first picture, Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion (from Tales of the Genii).  The figure of Sadak was so small that the framers disputed as to the top of the picture.  It sold to Mr. Manning for fifty guineas.  Benjamin West, president of the Royal Academy, encouraged Martin, and next year he painted Adam’s First Sight of Eve, which he sold for seventy guineas.  In 1814 his Clytis was shown in an ante-room of the exhibition, and he bitterly complained of his treatment.  Joshua, in 1816, was as indifferently hung, and he never forgave the Academy the insult, though he did not withdraw from its annual functions.  In 1817 he was appointed historical painter to Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold.  He etched about this time Character of Trees (seven plates) and the Bard at the Academy.  In 1818 he removed to Allsop Terrace, New (Marylebone road).  In 1819 came The Fall of Babylon, Macbeth (1820), Belshazzar’s Feast (1821), which, “excluded” from the Academy, yet won the L200 prize.  A poem by T.S.  Hughes started Martin on this picture.  It was a national success and was exhibited in the Strand behind a glass transparency.  It went the round of the provinces and large cities and attracted thousands.  Martin joined the Society of British Artists at its foundation and exhibited with them from 1824 to 1831, and also in 1837 and 1838, after which he sent his important pictures to the Royal Academy.