Questroyal 2009

Homer Dodge Martin ( 1836 – 1897 ) Plate 27 Highlands on the Hudson Oil on canvas 20 1 / 8 x 26 1 / 8 inches Signed lower left: H. D. Martin provenance Michael N. Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services, LLC, NewYork The corresponding position of transitional painters among the landscapists is held by three men––George Inness, Alexander H. Wyant, and Homer D. Martin. It was they who showed American painters and people the larger view of nature and of art which they had themselves in part discovered. george breed zug, art critic, 1908 1 Cherished All Too Late Homer Dodge Martin received little critical acclaim during his lifetime. Unlike his colleagues in the Hudson River school, Martin sold few paint- ings, 3 which led T. Worthington Whittredge to comment that Martin had “died before anybody discovered that he was a painter.” 4 After Martin’s death, however, his rightful position as a seminal figure in American land- scape painting was quickly realized. The Cleveland Museum of Art asserted that his landscapes were “full of the peculiar poetry which is always the mark of a man.” Royal Cortissoz declared that no museum of American art would be complete without a Martin painting. 5 And even contemporary art historians count him as “a key transitional figure in American art.” 6 — sjs Martin’s paintings are featured in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art,PortlandArtMuseum,and SmithsonianAmericanArtMuseum. 1 George Breed Zug, “The Story of American Painting, IX . Contemporary Landscape Painting,” The Chauntauquan: AWeekly News Magazine 50 , no. 3 (May 1908 ): 369 . 2 John Richard Dennetti quoted in Elizabeth Gilbert Martin, Homer Martin: A Reminis- cence (NewYork: W. Macbeth, 1904 ), p. ix . 3 Patricia C. F. Mandel, “The Stories behind Three Important Late Homer D. Martin Paintings,” Archives of American Art Journal 13 , no. 3 ( 1973 ): 2 . 4 John Driscoll, All that Is Glorious Around Us: Paintings from the Hudson River School (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997 ), p. 106 . 5 Royal Cortissoz, quoted inW. M. M., “Wild Coast, Newport, by Homer Martin,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art (March 1924 ): 57, 59 . 6 Driscoll, p. 106 . Martin’s landscapes look as if no one but God and himself had ever seen the places. john richard dennett, journalist , 1904 2