id: 159770 accession number: 1997.138 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1997.138 updated: 2020-02-03 09:00:46.650000 The Valley of the Tyne, My Native Country near Henshaw, 1842. John Martin (British, 1789-1854). Watercolor, gouache and gum arabic with graphite underdrawing, sanding, and scraping; sheet: 26.6 x 67.5 cm (10 1/2 x 26 9/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1997.138 title: The Valley of the Tyne, My Native Country near Henshaw title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1842 creation date earliest: 1842 creation date latest: 1842 current location: creditline: Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund copyright: --- culture: England, 19th century technique: watercolor, gouache and gum arabic with graphite underdrawing, sanding, and scraping department: Drawings collection: DR - British type: Drawing find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * John Martin (British, 1789-1854) - artist Born in Northumberland, John Martin began his career as a coach and ceramics painter before exhibiting oil paintings at the Royal Academy, London. His first critical success, Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion (1812, Saint Louis Art Museum), introduced his penchant for dramatic compositions with diminutive figures in vast and often threatening landscapes. Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gideon (1816, United Grand Lodge of England) and Belshazzar's Feast (1821, private collection) combined meticulous biblical and archaeological research with imaginative pictorial narrative and sensational architectural perspective to create a unique genre of the apocalyptic sublime. Martin was an inveterate self-promoter, and in an effort to broaden his commercial support in the 1820s he designed and engraved nearly a hundred mezzotint illustrations to the Bible and to Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), thus becoming one of the principal exponents and arguably the most accomplished practitioner of that printmaking technique in the nineteenth century. A number of unrealized engineering schemes that were as grandiose as the subjects of many of his most imposing pictures preoccupied Martin in the 1830s and 1840s, diverting much of his energy from his art. These plans included a water system and sewage disposal plan for the city of London. In his final years he returned to the cataclysmic inspiration of his middle period and painted a magnificent trilogy of Last Judgment pictures now in the Tate Gallery, London. --- measurements: Sheet: 26.6 x 67.5 cm (10 1/2 x 26 9/16 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: description: cream(3) wove paper, lined with beige(1) wove paper, perimeter mounted to a tertiary support of modern matboard watermarks: inscriptions: inscription: signed, lower right, in watercolor: J. Martin. / 1842 translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 2000-08-27T00:00:00 Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002). title: British Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 2013-02-10T00:00:00 British Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art . The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 10-May 26, 2013). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * John Martin, 1789-1854: Loan Exhibition [of] Oil Paintings, Watercolours, Prints. Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London (October 30 - November 21 1975). * British Paintings & Watercolours of the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries. Spink & Son,London (May 20 - June 6 1997). --- PROVENANCE Henry and Margaret Hobhouse; C. D. Hobhouse. [Spink-Leger Pictures, London]. date: footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: Panoramic landscapes in watercolor became an important source of income during Martin’s late career. This watercolor demonstrates his ability to convey monumentality on a small scale and to combine broad washes of color with meticulous detail. The sweeping vista in this drawing describes the fertile valley of the River Tyne, known for its forests, flora, and fauna. Curving arcs of slopes and plains swirl around the composition. A tiny couple and dog rush through the vast landscape beneath ominous storm clouds. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Cleveland Museum of Art, “Major African Sculpture, Recent Mark Tansey Painting, and Other Works of Art Enter CMA Collection,” September 16, 1997, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives. page number: url: https://archive.org/details/cmapr4152 Cleveland Museum of Art, Diane DeGrazia, and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 2000. page number: Mentioned: cat. no. 78, pp. 190-191; p. 294 url: Lemonedes, Heather. British Drawings: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013. page number: Mentioned: cat. no. 19b, pp. 60-63 url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1997.138/1997.138_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1997.138/1997.138_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1997.138/1997.138_full.tif