[3] Homer Martin: Poet in Landscape, by Frank Jewett Mather, New York, 1912.
The climax of his early work—that is, before 1876—seems to have been reached in such pictures as the “Lake Sandford.” It was shown at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876, but painted probably as far back as 1870. The scene is in the Adirondacks, and Martin has pictured the lake looking down from a distant height. There is a dark foreground of outcropping rock, then the light-reflecting surface of the long lake, then a ridge of dark mountains, and back of that the light sky—four planes in alternations of dark and light. It is woods, rock, water, and sky—no more. The largeness of Martin’s view, with its grasp of such essential elements as light, air, and space, is quite apparent notwithstanding a handling that seems too small for it. There is no petty puttering over leaves and stones, but the small catches of light-and-dark in the foliage, the tree trunks, the rocks, the sharp, clean-drawn outlines conceal rather than reveal the conception. Moreover, the smooth, enamel-like surface seems to act as a binder and a restraint. An excellent picture, as many another that he painted during this period; but Martin had not yet entirely emerged from his early manner, was not yet expressing himself fully and freely.
At this time, no doubt, he had seen in America some works by Corot and the Barbizon men and had been impressed by them, but a new period was to begin for him with his first trip to Europe. This was in 1876. He went to England, where he met and became intimate with Whistler and Albert Moore, then to France, where he visited Barbizon, though Millet and Rousseau were dead. He also went to St. Cloud to see Corot’s sketching-ground, and sketched there a bit himself. He did not do much painting. All of his sojourns abroad were times of study and observation. Mrs. Martin says that his working periods were very irregular, that he absorbed things by a slow means rather than painted by wilful effort; and he himself insisted that he could not paint without the impulse. Of course all this was set down to him as indolence by the hypercritical, but at the present time it is well understood that mental preparedness is necessary for the production of any great work, and that periods of long reflection are not periods of idleness.
He returned to New York in December of the same year and took up his painting, but he was now making some decided changes in both his matter and his manner. The generous expanse of the panoramic view was cut down to more modest landscape proportions. No doubt that had come to him from seeing the paysage intime of Corot, Rousseau, and Daubigny. Possibly, too, he had been persuaded by the broad, simple landscapes of Georges Michel, whose pictures were then well known not only in Paris but in New York. At any rate it is quite apparent in Martin’s work after 1876 that he was gradually discarding the “view” for something smaller and more intimate. It was still a mountain landscape known only to God and himself and had no human appeal, but it expressed Martin’s thought and feeling much better than the earlier affair.
His brush, too, was broadening. It was beginning to sweep over details, spots, and sparkles, and to emphasize masses of light or dark or color. Exactness of statement, sharpness of line, emphasis of drawing were hindrances rather than helps to expression. Later on, no doubt, he would have agreed in toto with a remark attributed by Charles Ricketts to Puvis de Chavannes: “La perfection bête qui n’a rien à faire avec le vrai dessin, le dessin expressif!” It was not until near the end of his career, when his eyesight had nearly gone, that Martin felt himself free from the restraint of method and materials. He then said to his wife in reply to some praise of a picture on the easel: “I have learned to paint at last. If I were quite blind now and knew just where the colors were on my palette I could express my self.”
But long before he thought himself able to paint he had arrived with painters and paint-lovers. In 1877 he was asked in at the birth of the Society of American Artists, and was an initial member of that organization. The next year he went to Concord for Scribners Monthly[4] to do some illustrations for an article on that place, and in 1881 he was sent to England by the Century Magazine[5] to prepare some illustrations of George Eliot’s country. Martin did not altogether like making the illustrations and considered it as only hack-work. And it seems that the Century people did not particularly care for his work, though just why would be hard to discover. To the casual critic of to-day looking at these drawings in the magazine they seem excellent, and, moreover, they are decidedly Martinesque though worked over by an engraver.
[4] Scribners Monthly, February, 1879.
[5] Century Magazine, vol. 30, 1885.
In London once more, the Martins saw much of Whistler and something of such literary people as Henley and the Gosses. After the illustrations were made they crossed over to France. It was planned to return soon to New York, but some unexpected money arrived and they stayed on at Villerville in Normandy. There and at Honfleur they remained until late in 1886. It was perhaps the most enjoyable period of their lives, for though they were poor in purse they were well-off in friends, and W. J. Henessey, Duez, Reinhart, the Forbes-Robertsons, the Brownells, and others came to see them. Life in Normandy was very attractive—perhaps too attractive for Martin’s work, for he seems to have completed few pictures while there. It was another period of absorption during which he sketched and laid in many pictures which were afterward finished in America—such pictures as “Low Tide, Villerville,” “Honfleur Light,” “Criquebœuf Church,” “Normandy Trees,” “Normandy Farm,” “Sun-Worshippers,” and the “View on the Seine.” He was not a painter to do a picture at one sitting. He required time and much musing before production.
Back once more in New York, Martin took a studio in Fifty-fifth Street, where he completed many of his Normandy canvases. After 1890 he had a painting-room in Fifty-ninth Street, where he did the “Haunted House” and the “Normandy Trees.” In 1892 he made a last trip to England, and spent some time at Bournemouth with George Chalmers. Returned again to America, he went to St. Paul to join Mrs. Martin, stopping on the way at the Chicago Fair, where a number of his pictures were shown. At St. Paul his eyesight began failing to an alarming degree. A famous oculist declared the optic nerve of one eye dead and the other eye clouded with cataract. But Martin now painted on with redoubled energy, as though conscious that his time was short. He finished a number of pictures and sent them on to New York, where he had a selling arrangement with a dealer. But alas! the pictures did not sell, and shortly afterward the painter laid aside his brushes. He was fatally ill with a malignant growth in the throat, and death came to him as something of a relief in 1897.