An Introduction to the Life of Conrad Martens
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1321816600002695Keywords:
Conrad Martens, German origins, European traditionsAbstract
The story of Conrad Martens begins in London in the early nineteenth century, when on 21 March 1801, a third son and fourth and youngest child was born to a merchant of German origins, J. Christopher Heinrich Martens, and his English wife, Rebecca née Turner. The family lived above their premises in the crowded old trading quarter of the city in a street called Crutched Friars, near the present day site of Fenchurch Street Station. ‘Having no taste for mercantile pursuits’, as Conrad Martens put it many years later, all three Martens boys became artists, despite the family's European traditions as merchants going back to the fifteenth century. Influenced by his older brothers, Conrad, at the age of sixteen, became a pupil of the well-known English landscape painter and teacher Anthony Van Dyke Copley Fielding.
References
This article draws on the author's book on Conrad Martens: Ellis, Elizabeth, Conrad Martens: Life and Art (Sydney: State Library of New South Wales Press, 1994). J. Christopher Heinrich Martens (1750–1816) was born in Venice. Rebecca Turner, who died in 1840, was born in Kent.
Martens, Conrad, cited in obituary of Conrad Martens, Australian Town and Country Journal, 31 Aug. 1878, p 397.
Martens, Conrad, ‘Journal of a Voyage on Board H.M.S. Hyacinth, commenced [Falmouth, Cornwall, UK] May 19.1833 — [Sydney Harbour, 17 April 1835]’. ML MSS ZA 429: 127–8.
Captain Robert FitzRoy, RN, letter written from Valparaiso, Chile to Captain Phillip Parker King, RN, Sydney, NSW, dated 5 Nov. 1834, King Papers, Lethbridge Collection, ML MSS ZA 3599: 55–7.
Martens, Conrad, draft letter written from Sydney to Henry Martens, London, dated 24 Feb. 1856, Martens Papers and Letters, item 2, DL MSQ 313.
‘The late Conrad Martens’, Sydney Mail, 31 Aug. 1878, p 332.
