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An Introduction to the Life of Conrad Martens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2016

Elizabeth Ellis
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Extract

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.

Type
Special Themed Section: Conrad Martens
Information
Queensland Review , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , May 2002 , pp. 3 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 

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References

Notes

1 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.Google Scholar

2 Martens, Conrad, cited in obituary of Conrad Martens, Australian Town and Country Journal, 31 Aug. 1878, p 397.Google Scholar

3 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.Google Scholar

4 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.Google Scholar

5 Martens, Conrad, draft letter written from Sydney to Henry Martens, London, dated 24 Feb. 1856, Martens Papers and Letters, item 2, DL MSQ 313.Google Scholar

6 ‘The late Conrad Martens’, Sydney Mail, 31 Aug. 1878, p 332.Google Scholar