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for HOMER DODGE MARTIN
HOMER DODGE MARTIN
1836 - 1897
Martin was born in 1836 in Albany, New York. Although he was primarily a self-taught artist, he did study briefly with landscapist James Hart. During his early years as a painter, he faced many hurdles, including his lack of professional training and his physical ailments such as melancholy, chronic eczema, and failing vision that rendered him nearly blind towards the end of his life.
He moved to New York City in the early 1860s and began to paint areas in the upstate New York area. He studied the landscapes of John Frederick Kensett, and made friends with John La Farge, who was known for his landscapes and still lifes. Martins works depicted natures unforgiving and cold characteristics. It is believed that the Adirondacks provided Martin his favorite venue for sketching.
Martin made two European visits, the first of which was in 1876. There he was inspired by the works of Camille Corot and the artists of the Barbizon school, which flourished in France between 1830 and 1870, and were just beginning to be introduced into the United States. His second visit was in 1882, and he lived principally in Brittany and Normandy until 1886, though producing few works.
Martin was part of a generation or group of artists whose works were transitional between the Hudson River School and the Barbizon group as it was called in France. This group crossed over from the early Hudson River School, with its attraction to the spectacular vistas of the American landscape, to the Barbizons rendering of landscape in a more straightforward, anti-classical manner. Returning to the United States, he was of considerable influence on the artist Nicholas Richard Brewer, another proponent of the Barbizon style, who met Martin in the early 1880s.
Towards the end of his career, in 1893, Martin moved to Minnesota, having visited there a decade before. He settled in Saint Paul, where he lived while struggling with cancer. During those years in Saint Paul he created some of his finest works, including "Harp of the Winds: A View on the Seine" (1895), (oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City). Other typical works are "Sand Dunes at Lake Ontario" and "White Mountains," both at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and "Sea at Villerville," Kansas City Art Institute.
He became a member of the National Academy of Design in 1874 and in 1877 was one of the founders of the Society of American Artists. Near the end of his life, nearly blind, he painted Adirondack Scenery from memory. Homer Martin died in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1897.
From website: http://www.askart.com/AskART/artists/biography.aspx?artist=21589
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