[The Lighthouse, Port Jackson]

Conrad Martens (1801 - 1878)

English-born landscape painter who achieved prominence in colonial Australia. He was born on 21 March 1801 in London, the son of J. C. H. Martens, a German-born merchant. Trained initially as a topographical draughtsman, Martens studied landscape painting under the watercolourist Copley Fielding, a leading figure of the English watercolour school. In 1832 Martens secured a position as ship’s artist on HMS Beagle during its surveying voyage under Captain Robert FitzRoy. He joined the vessel shortly before it reached Montevideo, replacing the ailing Augustus Earle. Martens thus sailed in the company of Charles Darwin, recording coastal views of South America and the Galápagos. Although he left the expedition at Valparaíso in 1834, his sketches remain important visual records of the voyage. After travelling through Tahiti and New Zealand, Martens arrived in Sydney in 1835. He quickly established himself as a professional painter of landscapes and homestead views, producing watercolours and lithographs for the colonial elite. His works, combining European picturesque conventions with the distinctive Australian light and terrain, became highly sought after among settlers eager to commemorate their estates. He undertook numerous commissions across New South Wales and Queensland, and his practice extended to teaching and exhibiting. Martens’s career spanned more than four decades, during which he became regarded as one of the foremost landscape painters in Australia. His art reflected both the scientific precision of his early training and the romantic sensibility of the English watercolour tradition. He continued to work actively until his death in Sydney on 21 August 1878. His extensive oeuvre, preserved in Australian and British collections, remains a vital record of the colonial landscape and its transformation in the nineteenth century.

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