James Bloxam is the conservator at Cambridge University Library who worked recently on the conservation of the sketchbooks. The following extracts are taken from his 1998 dissertation, and relate to Martens' interpretation of his mandate, and to his concept of the activity of `sketching'.
It is difficult to be exactly sure what Robert FitzRoy, Captain of H. M. S. Beagle, communicated to Conrad Martens on their meeting in Montevideo in the summer of 1833. ... FitzRoy's own brief included the task of executing surveys drawn up under the direction of Francis Beaufort, the Hydrographer of the Lord High Admiral.1 The plan for the voyage lists the Admiralty's major places of interest in South America, with particular reference to the areas that needed further exploration for the completion of its maps. Such is the magnitude of the task beholden to FitzRoy and his fellow officers that Beaufort concludes one passage of his instructions with an exhortation towards brevity in the use of drawings:
In such multiplied employments as must fall to the share of each officer, there will be no time to waste on elaborate drawings. Plain, distinct roughs, every where accompanied by explanatory notes, and on a sufficiently large scale to show the minutiae of whatever knowledge has been acquired, will be documents of far greater value in this office, to be reduced or referred to, than highly finished plans, where accuracy is often sacrificed to beauty.2
FitzRoy himself acknowledges the time restraints on himself and his fellow officers:
Knowing well that no one actively engaged in the surveying duties on which [we] were going to be employed, would have time -- even if he had the ability -- to make much use of the pencil, I engaged an artist ... to go out in a private capacity; though not without the sanction of the Admiralty, who authorized him to be victualled.3
It is clear that FitzRoy intended that his artist was to have a wider brief to illustrate more extensively the landscape and the people encountered on the voyage. Indeed some of Martens' sketches are translated, somewhat feebly, into the etchings that serve as illustrations in the Narrative. As well as Martens' official Admiralty brief, albeit directed to him via FitzRoy, and the wider illustrative brief from FitzRoy, there was an empirical imperative which influenced expectation: ever since the establishment of the Royal Society, in 1768, which had promoted Captain Cook's first voyage of the South Seas, there was a fundamental shift in landscape painting which depicted new worlds, from a neo-classical emphasis on perfect forms to a more scientific emphasis on accuracy. The expectation of an empirical, observational response would have been intensified by Martens' new colleagues, for whom the scientific ethos was their very raison d'être. Therefore, the atmosphere and ethic aboard the Beagle, so fundamentally scientific, would have been a strong influence on Martens' own understanding of his brief.
As well as being part of a team, it is clear that Martens had his own agenda: Martens' diary reveals a passion for looking and recording. His descriptive pose often includes value judgments concerning the things that interest him. For example, on arriving at the Beagle's first port of call since departure from Montevideo, Martens' journal entry of 23 December 1833 reads:
Arrived at Port Desire on the coast of Patagonia. It is a fine harbour, but the surrounding country is barren and uninteresting ... there is a pile of rocks on the south side of the harbour resembling tho' on a very impressive scale one of the Dartmor Torrs, there is but little however to attract or interest the eye.4
[Martens submitted many of his sketches to FitzRoy for his comments and approval, and FitzRoy then marked these with his initials.] Slinging the monkey, Port Desire is one of the first sketches that Martens submits to FitzRoy in this manner: FitzRoy's initials are in the top right hand corner, and he also notes at the bottom of the page: `Note Mainmast of the Beagle a little farther aft, Miz. Mast to rake more'. This telling comment is an early reminder that Martens is, at one level, FitzRoy's artist.
One further aspect to Martens' brief was the need to render portraits and genre scenes of the indigenous South American population. There are not many examples of figure sketches in Sketchbooks I and III, but FitzRoy obviously considers their recollections important as he uses some examples in his Narrative. There would, of course, have been an expectation as well as a natural reaction on Martens' part to record the local populace.
There is, then, the possibility for Martens to work beyond the confines of simple surveying work. It is clear that FitzRoy intended Martens to record the landscape in more detail than Beaufort required. Furthermore, following in the long line of artists who accompanied voyages around the world, Martens would surely have been aware of the expectation on him to produce images of other worlds. It is doubtful, however, that Martens needed any external pressure, as his self motivation is clearly evident.
It is important from the outset to be clear as to the status of Conrad Martens' Sketchbooks I and III. They are sketchbooks, and as Martens himself acknowledges in his Lecture upon landscape painting, they are the `first part of the business'.5 The lecture, albeit delivered some twenty years after Martens' Beagle experiences, puts the sketch into context. Indeed, it is possible to trace, retrospectively, a number of processes that Martens practised some twenty years before he extolled them publicly.
Conrad Martens' Sketchbooks I and III bear testimony to his flexible and responsive theories. One may observe four main points that relate to the possible construction of a sketch. First, Martens concentrates on the brevity of a sketch:
Now the sketch should be slight as it is for the purpose only of giving a general idea of the subject to be painted, and the beginning of the work is not the time for details. It may be made in pencil only, in order to show how the forms will combine ... 6
Santa Cruz river, evening, 3 May 1834, Sketchbook I (MS.Add.7984: 13v--14r), is an excellent example of Martens sketching to `show how the forms will combine'. The double page panorama is the most minimal of skteches, with pale blue additions of watercolour to indicate the river. The distant mountains, identifiable from other works as the Cordilleras, are simpy outlined, and any detail in the mid-ground and foreground is often merely noted in pencil. For example on the foreground part of the right-hand side Martens writes, `sandy bank ...'. By the time he produced Cordillera of the Andes from the Santa Cruz river, no date, National Maritime Museum, PR 73-41(11), Martens transforms the image to produce the most complete watercolour development of the simple, slight sketch. It is possible to observe the development from the sketch, with its preparatory emphasis on showing how `the forms will combine', to the watercolour with its attention to detail and overall effect of the landscape.
Second, Martens says that the sketch `may be made in black and white for the purpose of arranging light and shade'.7 In Island Chiloé, view at Point Arenas, 11 July 1834, Sketchbook I (MS.Add.7984: 33), Martens' more heavily shaded areas are in the left-hand foreground: the trees and an undulation in the ground create a dark, cavernous form which leads out and across to the area slightly left of the middle foreground. The progression is aided by more dark tree roots and stumps until, finally, they give way to the lighter centre middle-ground and so into the paler background. Therefore, Martens arranges the light and dark areas with his pencil sketch. Once again a watercolour development builds on the preparatory sketch: one can see in View of Chiloé, no date, National Maritime Museum, PR 73-41(15), how Conrad Martens exploits to the full the potential for light and shade that the aforementioned sketch offers. The dark foreground in View of Chiloé now sweeps into the light of the middle ground and by the time our eye reaches out to the distance, the horizon is almost too bright to read any clear detail. There is, therefore, in the case of the above sketch and the resulting watercolour a clearly defined `arranging [of] the light and shade'.
However, such is the flexibility of his approach that Martens can go on to assert that whilst this arrangement is sometimes necessary, there may be occasions when form `may just be blotted down in colour as a guide to that important part of the picture'.8 His third point is perhaps less prescriptive than the previous one: instead of talking about arranging, Martens talks of blotting down colour. Clearly the two points relate to different aspects of picture making, but the contrast of language is quite striking. It is as though Martens is expressing the importance of a freedom of technique in the midst of the more theoretical and technical passages. It is important to note that not all of the sketches from Sketchbooks I and III necessarily form the basis for a further development. Therefore, it is important to illustrate Martens' third point on the construction of a sketch with an example that shows simple forms `blotted down in colour', such as Milk boy, no date, Sketchbook III (MS.Add.7983: 17), which illustrates Martens' notion of a simple placement of colour. It is not clear whether Martens ever used this `as a guide' for further development or not. What is clear, however, is that Martens feels free to dispense with the pencil and put doen colour in very simple blocks when the need arises.
Martens' last point on the construction of a sketch deals with composition:
lastly it may be composed of all together but on too small a scale to define objects or to enter into any details.9
Perhaps the best example to illustrate Martens' final point is his pencil sketch Distant view of eastern side of the Cordilleras, no date, Sketchbook I (MS.Add.7984: 12). Martens' sketch, which fills less than a quarter of the page, is minimal in its description and in its size. Despite its smallness of scale and the lack of definition of objects, one can clearly ascertain the subject of the sketch. Furthermore, Martens himself developed the sketch in Distant view of the Andes from the Santa Cruz river, no date, National Maritime Museum PR 73-41(12), to include considerable detail of the foreground tree forms and foliage. The watercolour development retains the panoramic emphasis witnessed in the sketch: the sketch, whilst being small on the vertical scale, entirely fills the page from left to right. Thus, Martens' emphasis is on the completeness of the overall composition, its hinting at detail and its panoramic impact: these elements form the basis for the watercolour development where Martens significantly amplifies the suggestion of detail found in the sketch. Such sketches minimalise detail to the extent of leaving certain elements out altogether, but remain utterly reliable for composition despite the smallness of scale and the scarcity of objects and detail.
Sketchbooks I and III bear testimony, then, to Conrad Martens' definition and status of a sketch, and one may observe different types and emphases within the discipline. Furthermore, one may also note certain aspects of his drawing technique which Martens later explains to his audience in the Lecture upon landscape painting:
The principal difficulty in sketching with the pencil out of doors, is to avoid confusion, and at the same time to get your paper full of forms. This can only be done by different degrees of force of outline according to the distances of the principal masses, and if these are got in first with a firm and unbroken line, all that is included by them will keep its place; a much greater variety of distances can thus be obtained than would at first be imagined. A common pencil will produce in good hands at least four different degrees of strength, viz. a light clear but thin line, the same with a broader point, then a second degree of pressure with its sharp and soft line. What is termed Hatching, should be avoided as muc as possible in a sketch. Rapidity is very desirable and we all know that Hatching is a slow process.10
In Sketchbooks I and III Martens certainly employs all the above drawing techniques. It is difficult to be sure whether Martens developed these techniques himself or whether he learnt them from his teacher, Copley Fielding, although Ruskin, a pupil for a short time with Copley Fielding, extols similar ideas to Martens', in his book The elements of drawing.11
...The sketch, then, is Conrad Martens' `means to an end'.12 Yet the `first part of the business'13 is more than a technical solution to a problem, as it represents the choices the artist has made: considerations such as what facts should be recorded, or what effects imitated are as much mental operations as they are technical. Indeed, the very application of the marks on the page themselves are part of an intellectual process that involves choice, expectation, prior knowlede or experience, and may other artistic and cultural factors that go beyond dexterity in the use of the pencil. Therefore, whilst accepting Martens' assertions and explanations concerning his definition of a sketch, it is important not to see the sketches as merely templates or patterns to be worked from at a later date: surely Sketchbooks I and III testify to an intellectual engagement with nature and its effects. Conrad Martens draws a comparison between knowing what to do in art and knowing what to say in writing. He acknowledges that mere dexterity in the use of a pencil in drawing or, indeed, the use of a pen in writing is not enough:
A person may write a very learned and elegant letter in a very indifferent hand, and a very foolish and nonsensical one, may be a beautiful specimen of penmanship.14
So, if one understands Conrad Martens correctly, the idea and the translation of that idea should be in harmony with one another. Line, form and idea are all interrelated: one reads the marks on the paper, observes the suggestion of forms and experiences the imitation of an effect from nature. This response is not necessarily linear as it is often more of a triangular process, as one aspect of the engagement impinges on another: our senses, during the optical convergence on forms, are stimulated and lead to an intellectual response which may include feelings and concepts. Sketchbooks I and III are, therefore, as worthy of critical engagement as any other work of art: the process is the same regardless of the sketches' position in the overall scheme of artistic production.
Having established the status of Sketchbooks I and III, with reference to Conrad Martens' assertion that they are a `means to an end',15 it is worth considering what Martens himself judged to be the ultimate end of the art of landscape painting. He said:
Herein then lies in a great measure the art of landscape painting, not in that of imitating individual objects, but the art of imitating an effect which nature has produced with means far beyond anything we have at command.16
This idea of `imitating an effect' had, by the end of the eighteenth century, become an established characteristic of the English art of watercolour painting. The peculiarly English obsession with a search for what became known as the Picturesque is well summarised by C. M. Kauffmann in his book John Varley.17 Kauffmann notes Edmund Burke's attempt to establish a philosophical theory of taste in his Philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and the beautiful. The Sublime, according to Burke, was what inspired awe, terror through the sensation of infinity, whilst Beauty was essentially a delicate prettiness. However, Uvedale Price in his Essay on the picturesque asserted that the Picturesque was distinct from the Sublime and the Beautiful. Price stated that the artist should convey the Picturesque by creating scenes of irregularity and not uniform perfection. Price, in turn, was criticised by Richard Payne Knight, Squire of Dowton in Herefordshire, a collector and connoisseur. Knight stressed the viewer's subjective experience: `our pleasure in viewing painting arises from associating other ideas with those immediately excited by them'.18 Finally Wordsworth and Turner appeal to moral and religious interpretations, experienced with emotional intensity. Thus, Kauffmann has taken us back, neatly, to the Sublime -- or, to use another term, the Romantic.
Before Martens left England he was a pupil of Copley Fielding. It was Ruskin who wrote of Martens' tutor:
The depth of far distant brightness, freshness and mystery of morning air, with which Copley Fielding used to invest the ridges of the South Downs as they rose out of the Sussex champaign, remains, and I believe must ever remain, insuperable, while his sense of beauty in the cloud forms associated with the higher mountains enabled him to invest the comparatively modest scenery of our own island -- out of which he never travelled -- with a charm seldom attained by the most ambitious painters of Alp or Apennine.19
Ruskin's emphasis on `depth', `freshness' and `mystery' bears testimony to the prevailing preference for an art which transcended attempts at mere imitation of nature. This essential element in art is championed by Martens himself when he quotes Sir Joshua Reynolds:
... if the excellence of a picture consists only in [a] kind of imitation, painting must lose its rank and be no longer considered a liberal art ... this imitation being merely mechanical, in which the slowest intellect is always sure to succeed the best ... 20
One may, therefore, observe certain characteristics in Sketchbooks I and III that bear witness to Martens' desire for `imitating an effect'.21 It is possible from John Ruskin's remarks concerning his own period of tuition under Copley Fielding, to understand some of Martens' tendencies in his interpretations of nature. Ruskin records what he learnt from Copley Fielding, just a few years later than Martens:
... Copley Fielding taught me to wash colour smoothly in successive tints, to shade cobalt through pink madder into yellow ochre for skies, to use a broken scraggy touch for the tops of mountains, to represent calm lakes by broad strips of shade with lines of light between them ... and to crumble burnt umber with a dry brush for foliage and foreground.22
Whilst it is not possible to illustrate all of the aforementioned noted from Ruskin's understanding of Copley Fielding's preferences, given the nature of the brevity of most of the watercolour sketches in Sketchbooks I and III, one may observe some influences.
Martens certainly tends to `crumble burnt umber with a dry brush for foliage and foreground', witness Mount Sarmiento, Lomas Range, highest 2963, no date, Sketchbook III (MS.Add.7983: 32). Martens exploits this technique, which is akin to scumbling in oil painting, when he employs it in most of the watercolour examples in Sketchbook III. Indeed, Martens continues to use this technique in his watercolour developments, for example Distant view of the Andes from the Santa Cruz river.
...Conrad Martens often follows an observable trend in some English Watercolourists' work, in terms of a picture's composition: for example, in Mount Sarmiento, Lomas Range, the highest 2963, one tends to read the sketch from the foreground to the left mid-ground section, where the ship redirects one's attention to the centre and right-hand side, and so into the distance. This reading, first to the left and then back out to the right, can be seen in some of the work of Copley Fielding's teacher, John Varley. Varley's Moel Hebog from near Dinas Emrys, watercolour and pencil, circa 1804, has at its centre a river meandering left, with the land then rising diagonally to the right. Similarly in Martens' Wood Island, Port Desire 7 miles, 26 December 1833, watercolour, Sketchbook III (MS.Add.7983: 27v), the tiny figure serves to aid one's reading of the composition from left to right, enabling a full appreciation of the breadth and depth of the landscape, which seems to stretch into infinity. Martens seems to build layer upon layer of elements that begin with the familiar scumbled foreground through to the mid-ground where the figure stands possibly looking out to the connecting sea, hills and distant mountains.
Such an emphasis on breadth is evident in both Sketchbooks I and III: clearly one effect Martens wants to convey is an experience of breadth in nature, even in the sketches that are not deliberately panoramic. One may be tempted to ask if Martens is seeking some sense of irregularity in an attempt to convey a Pricean notion of the Picturesque. However, Martens' response to the possibility of dull uniformity leading to uninspired imitation is to warn against losing depth and movement, as a possible consequence of attempting breadth. Martens said, `while in your solicitude to obtain breadth, see that you do not degenerate into flatness ...'.23 One witnesses this strong desire for depth as well as breadth in Martens' sketch and subsequent chalk and watercolour development of a view of Montevideo from the South. The sketch Montevideo, 28 August 1833, drawing, Sketchbook III (MS.Add.7983: 14), is not at all cramped, yet the buildings look tentative and the mountain on the right appears flattened. This flatness is possibly the result of Martens drawing the scene with a very horizontal emphasis. This is not the case in Martens' chalk and watercolour development, Montevideo from the South, no date, British Museum, LB 34, where one's eye is encouraged to follow the route into the city: the whole design has more depth, as one is led from the foreground through the mid-ground by the diagonal of the journey. Furthermore, Martens highlights the arm of the central figure to give even more emphasis to the route; even Martens' signature is directional. Martens has learnt from and developed the sketch: paradoxically, whilst giving the scene a bigger format and the elements more space, the chalk and watercolour development concentrates on a smaller area of the scene approaching Montevideo. As well as depth, then, Martens is emphasising the journey and, not least, the diminutive figure set within the landscape.
This depiction of the fragile figure set in the landscape is not unusual in the context of English Watercolour painting. It has its roots, of course, in Dutch seventeenth-century landscape painting, from which many Emglish landscape and marine artists drew inspiration. It was John Constable, no less, who in 1828 wrote to a friend, `I have seen an affecting picture this morning, by Ruysdael. It haunts my mind and clings to my heart'.24 Indeed, Turner responded to a landscape by Van de Velde thus: `This made me a painter ...'.25 And Joshua Reynolds, whom Martens held in high regard, said to an audience of Royal Academy students in 1784, `Painters should go to the Dutch school to learn the art of painting ...'.26
...(It is, perhaps, Turner who provides a way through the many possible influences. Turner draws a comparison between Van Goyen and Rembrandt: `Both possess uniformity and breadth of tone, but no person conversant with technicalities would call them similar'.27 Conrad Martens held Turner in high regard; he said there was `no higher authority in landscape'.28)
...One may also concede that the smallness of Martens' figures is somewhat inevitable, given the panoramic nature of many of his sketches. His diminutive figures are, therefore, part of his scale as much as they are part of any tradition. However, the fragility or mere suggestion of form and pose have more in common with some of Rembrandt and Constable's work than they do with what some have unkindly referred to as Martens' inability to draw figures well. Like those of Rembrandt and Constable, Martens' figures seem to be both part of the landscape and yet representative of man's often uncertain presence within it. Martens' figures occupy the places that he has experienced himself: perhaps their tentative presence in such relatively uncharted surroundings reflects Martens' own experience of the uncertainty of such a journey.
Sketchbooks I and III are, then, evidence of a desire for an ultimate end which transcends mere record or imitation and seeks to build on and exploit those elements which characterise English Watercolourists generally and Copley Fielding's influence more specifically. Yet Martens did not slavishly follow his teacher. Moreover, the Sketchbooks testify to Conrad Martens' growing confidence and development in his desire to create his own unique imitation of `an effect' from nature.
1 FitzRoy, Robert, Narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle, between the years 1826 and 1836, 3 vols, London, 1839 ["Narrative"]: vol. 2, pp. 24--41.
2 Ibid., pp. 33--34.
3 Ibid., p. 19.
4 Organ, Michael, Conrad Martens' journal of a voyage from England to Australia, via South America and the Pacific Islands, 1833--35 (unpublished) [Sydney, Mitchell Library, Ml A429] ["Martens' journal"]: pp. 18--19.
5 Martens, Conrad, Lecture upon landscape painting, in Lindsay, Lionel, Conrad Martens: the man and his art, London, 1968, pp. 28--39 ["Martens' lecture"]: p. 29.
6 Ibid., pp. 29--30.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ruskin, John, The elements of drawing, New York, 1971.
12 Martens' lecture, p. 30.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., p. 29.
15 Ibid., p. 30.
16 Ibid., p. 32.
17 Kauffmann, C. M., John Varley, London, 1984, pp. 19--20.
18 Ibid.
19 Lindsay, Lionel: Conrad Martens: the man and his art, London, 1968, p. 17.
20 Martens' lecture, p. 33.
21 Ibid., p. 32.
22 Smith, Bernard, European vision and the South Pacific, London, 1985, p. 304.
23 Martens' lecture, p. 38.
24 Arts Council of Great Britain, Shock of recognition, London, 1971, p. 9.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid., p. 64.
28 Martens' lecture, p. 38.