Conrad Martens
| Conrad Martens | |
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Portrait of Conrad Martens, National Library of Australia
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| Born | 1801 London, England |
| Died | 21 Aug 1878 (aged 76–77) North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Known for | Watercolour painting |
Conrad Martens (London 1801 – 21 August 1878) was an English-born landscape painter active on HMS Beagle from 1833, and in Australia from 1835.
Conrad Martens' father was a merchant who came originally to London as Austrian Consul; Conrad was born in "Crutched Friars" near Tower Hill. Like his two brothers, John William and Henry, he studied landscape painting under the prominent watercolourist Copley Fielding.
In 1832 he joined the ship Hyacinth as a topographical artist. In Montevideo near the end of 1833 he met Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle, who engaged him as a draughtsman to replace the ship's artist Augustus Earle who had fallen ill. In this way he joined the second voyage of HMS Beagle and soon struck up a lifelong friendship with Charles Darwin who was taking part in the expedition as a self-financing gentleman naturalist and companion to the captain. They sailed south to Patagonia. Martens left the Beagle at Valparaiso in the second half of 1834 and took passage to Sydney via Tahiti, arriving in 1835.
Martens was introduced to the New South Wales gentry and soon achieved success in Sydney with several commissions. He went on to become the most proficient, prominent and prolific landscape artist in the colony. The Beagle arrived in 1836, and Darwin and Captain Fitzroy commissioned a number of paintings from the Beagle's voyages in Tierra Del Fuego and the Pacific. Other large commissions followed, and in 1837 some of Martens' Australian watercolours were exhibited at the Royal Society in London. In 1839, however, a drought triggered an economic recession which was to last until the 1850s, and commissions became increasingly difficult to acquire. In the 1840s he turned to lithographs, which allowed him to sell the same work many times over - his 'View of Sydney from the North Shore' was especially popular.
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