Conrad Martens Australian, 1801-1878

Possibly John Brown or William Fanning (Martens's Account book, 25 March and 31 October 1844 as 'Illawarra Lake')

Possibly in Dr Sedgewick's Collection of Art at James Lawson's, Sydney, 1 October 1895, lot 72 

Australian, Historical and Contemporary Drawings and Paintings and some European Paintings and Sculpture, Christie's, Melbourne, 14 - 15 March 1972

Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne

Collection of Ted Lustig, Melbourne

Conrad Martens Centenary Exhibition, S. H. Ervin Museum and Gallery, Sydney, 24 May - 23 July 1978, cat. 54a

Spring Exhibition 1978, Recent Acquisitions, Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne, 25 September - 9 October 1978, cat. 12, illus. as 'Lake Landscape, Illawarra, 1848'

On loan to the Geelong Art Gallery, Geelong, Victoria, 6 December 2005 - August 2006

Many of Martens's views of the landscape, in oil or watercolour, were commissioned by patrons wishing to convey the peace and prosperity of their new homeland, with its fine climate and picturesque topography. Martens’s great gift was his ability to incorporate minutely observed effects of nature into compositions which embodied all the precepts of landscape art as he – and his patrons – understood it. Trained in England by the fashionable landscape painter Copley Fielding, Martens set sail in 1832 for three years in India. However in 1833 he left that first ship in South America and there joined the Beagle, travelling with the young Charles Darwin and Captain Robert FitzRoy. During his 1833-34 voyage aboard the Beagle, from Montevideo to Valparaiso, Martens learned all he could about geology, botany, and meteorology – a relatively new science and a special interest of FitzRoy; studies which informed his depiction of land, sea and sky for the remainder of his career. He left the Beagle in October 1834; and, early the following year, sailed for Tahiti and finally Australia.

Martens visited Lake Illawarra in July 1835, not long after his arrival in the colony, and one of his earliest large watercolours, Illawarra Lake, 1835, now in the Dixson Collection at the State Library of New South Wales, is very similar to the present painting in composition but without the figures.¹

This large and handsome oil painting is probably one of two works listed in Martens’s Account book in 1844 with the title ‘Illawarra Lake’: one was sold to William Fanning for twelve guineas and the other was exchanged for wine from his longstanding Sydney wine merchant, John Brown. Which of these is the present painting is now unknown. The composition, with its golden light and framing trees, follows the classical landscape tradition Martens had so admired in the art of Claude and J. M. W. Turner. It is not intended as a particular view of Lake Illawarra. However the broad topographical outline is precise and there is an emphasis on the exotic native vegetation of the area including cabbage tree palms and trailing vines. Martens depicts a traveller, mounted on his horse and viewing the landscape in apparent harmony with an encampment of Aborigines. The twilight effect may well be Martens’s poignant symbol of an era near its end, soon to be eclipsed by European settlement and the inevitable march of ‘progress’.

We are most grateful to Elizabeth Ellis for assistance in cataloguing this work.

1. Elizabeth Ellis, Conrad Martens, Life and Art, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, 1994, illus. p. 25 and see pp. 147-8.

A watercolour of Lake Illawarra is in the State Library of New South Wales; sketches are July 1835 (ZPXC) 296 and 389.