The Sun.
London, England, 1828-09-10 00:00:00

FINE ARTS.-MR. MARTIN'.

The recent publication of Mr. Martin's " De-
luge" enables us to take this, our first, oppor-
tunity of saying a few words respecting his cha-
racter as an artist. We have watched his pro-
gress up tho hill of fame with interest, mingled
at times with distrust ; but now that its toilsome
heights are gained—now that the thousand ob-
stacles which at each step beset the path are
vanquished—obstacles which hang upon ge-
nius like mortgages on a fruitful estate, and
which genius alone can surmount—we feel
ourselves called on to bear testimony to the
very spirited manner in which they have been
met and mastered. As an artist, Mr. Martin
ranks among the very first of his age. His style
is full of poetry, invention, and richness ; owing
little to others, drawing less from memory, but
digging, unassisted, from its own rich mine, as
from the loom of fancy the Princess Scheherezade
spun a Thousand and One Romances. In the
style of his imagination Mr. Martin is strictly
Oriental ; nor do we know an artist so competent
to illustrate the Arabian fictions. The Genii—
the Goules—and the Enchanters of the East,
would meet fair play at his hands ; he would
deepen the sombre ; enhance the supernatural ;
and throw over Eblis himself an air of improved
grandeur.

Some artists derive their chief effect from the
delineation of character. This assuredly is high
ground to stand on ; it is to lay claim, in their
degree, to the same attributes which have im-
mortalized Shakspeare, and Scott, and Byron ;
to be a partaker of the fame of Hogarth—to
descend to posterity with Wilkie. Mr. Hay-
don, in his better moments, is one of these ; not
so Mr. Martin. He relies chiefly for success on
the variety and splendour of his incident—on
the execution of the whole, not a part. Thus,
in his Belshazzar's Feast, it is not the spirit of
one individual character, or episode, that we
admire, but the completeness and harmony of
the entire picture. Belshazzar himself extorts
no closer attention than the splendours of his
festal table ; the lights from heaven are equalled
by those on earth—animate rivals inanimate.
The crowning glory is certainly that unequalled
perspective, where pillar stretches after pillar,
far away to an almost infinite extent in the
back ground—the spectator's power of sight
growing dimmer as the objects recede into
distance—but still even this particular effect
is grand only as connected with the whole ;
apart, and by itself, it would be nothing. Again,
in the Deluge the story is not told by character,
but by incident ; the excellence is not partial,
but general. The overhanging precipice thrown
boldly out by the lurid sky around it—the
quick quivering flashes of lightning—the immense
sweep of the waves, instinct with such expressive
power—the ark in the distance—the half.
engulfed rocks in front :—these give its tone to
the picture ; the characters, however excellent,
are adjuncts, and in miniature. In this last
respect Mr. Martin—a not uncommon case
with the Oriental imagination—lays too little
stress on animate, and too much on inanimate
objects. He is the Gibbon of pictorial history.
A bit of rock with him is as important as the
agonized wretches who cling to it. This is an
error of judgment. The Deluge was awful only
as regarded its victims. The hand-writing on
the wall was meant for Belshazzar and his guests,
not for his palace or its treasures : the destruc-
tion of Nineveh was unimpressive as to the
city itself ; it afforded matter for history
solely as connected with the inhabitants. In
painting, as in poetry, or indeed in any depart-
ment of intellect, character is the first considera-
tion, incident the second ; hence Hogarth and
Wilkie will be remembered, when Barry and
Danby are forgotten.
We are not among those who find fault with
Mr. Martin for his utter absence of simplicity
and nature. His very subjects preclude such
display. Earthquakes, warnings, and convul-
sions of the elements, are among the phenomena,
not the common places of nature, and must be
adjudged by laws of their own. Enough for
the artist if, by the conception of his mind and
the magic of his pencil, he excite such emo-
tions as the contemplation of the horrors ahoy
mentioned would elicit. To require more is,
like the critic mentioned by Swift, to object to
Homer that he was not a Church-of-England-
man. The question, then, resolves itself to this
—has Mr. Martin, in the exercise of his im-
pressive fancy, called forth corresponding emo-
tions in the spectator ? We think he has. We
think that none who ever stood before his
Belshazzar's Feast—who ever witnessed his
Deluge—where horror on its grandest scale, and
nature in the very extremity of distress, in the last
agonies of dissolution, are pourtrayed with a vivid-
ness that brings them home to the spectator
at a glance—who ever looked impartially at his
destruction of Nineveh—we think that none wko
ever beheld these surprising effusions of imagina-
tion, could fail to be struck with the artist's ex-
traordinary genius, and to regret that he had not
hestowed—a little—a very little more attention on
his characters.

Another evidence of Mr. Martin's deserts is
dt he
uc
eesfi; e c t
onthatmany
of t
h produced,
emost
n. as i
ngn and i smt inlle r pro-
duces, o-
s of
the day. We trace his style wherever arrbi
tecture is pourtrayed ; much of him in Danby,
s -
and much more of him scattered miscellaneously
among the paintings at Somerset House. In
short, he is the artist, of all others, to whom
Eblis would most readily sit for his likeness;
the Venuses and the Nymphs, of a milder, a
more sylvan, and voluptuous superstition, would,
we fear, be somewhat shy. of him.
But non
omnia possnmns °miles, we cannot be a Milton
and a Moore at once.

The easterly winds which have prevailed since
our last have prevented arrivals from the westward. It
bethseaetna, hnousinvebveeir,ofbvy the
esseki, reportinward o
nwardfirobonui Thaevl:gparasp,hed-
-Liv er pool Albion.