John Martin (painter)
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John Martin (July 19, 1789–February 17, 1854), English painter, was born at Haydon Bridge, near Hexham. He was apprenticed by his father to a coachbuilder to learn heraldic painting, but owing to a quarrel the indentures were cancelled, and he was placed under Bonifacio Musso, an Italian artist, father of the enamel painter Charles Musso. With his master, Martin removed to London in 1806, where he married at the age of nineteen, and supported himself by giving drawing lessons, and by painting in water colors, and on china and glass. His leisure was occupied in the study of perspective and architecture.
His first picture, Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion, was exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1812, and sold for fifty guineas. It was followed by the Expulsion (1813), Paradise (1813), Clytie (1814), and Joshua (1815). In 1821 appeared his Belshazzar's Feast, which excited much favorable and hostile comment, and was awarded a prize of £200 at the British Institution, where the Joshua had previously carried off a premium of £100. Then came the Destruction of Herculaneum (1822), the Creation (1824), the Eve of the Deluge (1841), and a series of other Biblical and imaginative subjects.
In 1832 - 1833 Martin received 2000 for drawing and engraving a fine series of designs to John Milton, and with Westall he produced a set of Bible illustrations. He was also occupied with schemes for the improvement of London, and published various pamphlets and plans dealing with the metropolitan water supply, sewerage, dock and railway systems (his 1834 plans for London's sewerage system anticipated by some 25 years the 1859 proposals of Joseph Bazalgette to create interceptory sewers complete with walkways along both banks of the River Thames).
During the last four years of his life he was engaged upon his large subjects of The Judgment, the Day of Wrath, and the Plains of Heaven. This tryptich currently hangs in Tate Britain. He was attacked with paralysis while painting, and died on the Isle of Man.