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About Homer D. Martin
Although we cannot agree with Mantle Fielding that Martin was "in a sense, the first American impressionist," it must be acknowledged that he closely approached the aesthetic. Born in the same year as Alexander Wyant, Martin forged a career that spanned the Hudson River School style to a quasi-impressionism. Popular with the earlier critics, Martin was praised with hyperbole: "his finest canvases looked as if no one but God and he had ever seen the places pictured" (Sherman, 1917, p. 4), but was justly allocated a respectful place in the pantheon of American landscape painters. Martin was the son of Homer Martin and Sarah Dodge. Essentially, he was self-taught: Martin’s future wife Elizabeth verified that he made drawings as a child (Martin, 1904, pp. 4-5). Erastus Dow Palmer, the sculptor, recognized Martin’s talent and invited him to attend a salon of artists that included George Boughton (1833-1905), William Hart (1823-1894) and James M. Hart (1828-1901). Will Low (1908, p. 243), who chronicled American expatriate artists in Brittany, knew Martin from childhood days in Albany, where he was born on 28 October 1836.
By 1857, Martin began sending works to the *National Academy of Design. Two years later, he was working in the Tenth Street Studio Building. He married Elizabeth Gilbert Martin on 25 June 1861. Homer Dodge Martin began painting in a detailed Hudson River School style, then gradually suppressed detail until he became known for his "power to wrest from the scene before him its very heart, to seize the essential – the elemental" (Meyer, 1908, p. 255). Part of this new simplification resulted from the influence of John F. Kensett (though he had known Kensett in the Tenth Street Studio). Mather (1912, pp. 37-38) pointed out how Martin "was the only painter intelligent enough" to realize that Kensett was an artist worth imitating. But Martin, "one of the Corot worshippers from the first," according to his wife, underwent the Barbizon influence during a trip to Europe in 1876. In addition, Martin met Whistler in London. Consequently, in the late 1870s, Martin’s works "reveal the influence of both Whistler and Corot in the choice of small forest scenes, increased freedom of handling, and concentration on tone. . . ." (Spassky, 1985, p. 421). Another voyage abroad followed: between 1881 and 1886 he remained in France, mainly in Normandy (Villerville). Mrs. Martin (1904, p. 39) called the trip to France her husband’s "seed-time" where his artistic concepts germinated. |
Paintings by Homer D. Martin
| The Miller’s Meadow |
| oil on panel: 7¼ x 9¾ inches |
| signed: lower right (masked by edge of frame) |
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