Homer Dodge Martin (1836 - 1897)

 

Homer Dodge Martin was an American artist, particularly known for his landscape paintings. Examples of Martin's work are in many important American museums.

 

Martin was born in Albany, New York on October 28, 1836, the fourth and youngest son of Homer Martin and Sarah Dodge.  A pupil for a short time of William Hart, his earlier work was closely aligned with the Hudson River School. Other Albany painters of his acquaintance included George Boughton, and Edward Gay.

 

During the 1860s he spent the summers in the Adirondacks, Catskills and White Mountains, and painted landscapes from the sketches he made there at his studio in New York City's Tenth Street Studio Building.

 

On June 25, 1861 he married Elizabeth Gilbert Davis, also of Albany.  Martin was elected as associate of the National Academy of Design, New York, in 1868, and a full academician in 1874. During a trip to Europe in 1876, he was captivated by the Barbizon school and the Impressionists, and thereafter his painting style gradually became darker, moodier, and more loosely-brushed.  From 1882 to 1886, he lived in France, spending much of the time in Normandy, including stays at the Etaples art colony.

 

By 1897 Martin had returned to New York City; in 1893 he moved to St. Paul, Minnesota where, nearly blind, he painted one of his best-known works, Adirondack Scenery (1895) from memory. Although never successful within his lifetime, within two years of his death Adirondack Scenery sold for $5500 and Harp of the Winds (1895) was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

Martin's paintings can be found in the collections of other important American museums including the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Albany Institute of History and Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

 

He died on February 12, 1897 in St. Paul, Minnesota