David Martin
English, 1736 - 1798
Scottish painter and engraver. He was a pupil of Allan Ramsay from c. 1752; in 1755 he joined Ramsay in Rome, where he remained for over a year, studying under the patronage of Robert Alexander, an Edinburgh banker. On Ramsay’s return to Britain, Martin worked for him in London until 1775, painting most of the drapery work during the early and middle 1760s. By 1766, when he engraved Ramsay’s portrait of Jean Jacques Rousseau (Edinburgh, N.G.), he was earning over £300 a year as assistant and copyist. He began his independent practice while still engaged in Ramsay’s studio: his finest early portrait is that of Benjamin Franklin (1767; Washington, DC, White House Col.); it is informal and intimate, and it was described by Horace Walpole as ‘a great likeness’. Although Martin’s preferred format was three-quarter length, in the late 1770s he attempted full-lengths of Henry, 2nd Earl Bathurst (Oxford, Balliol Coll.), and William, 1st Earl of Mansfield (Scone Pal., Tayside).
After Ramsay’s death in 1784 Martin settled in Edinburgh, where he established himself as the leading Scottish portrait painter, until Henry Raeburn superseded him in the late 1790s. In 1791 Martin was chosen, in preference to Raeburn, to paint Sir James Pringle of Stitchell (Edinburgh, Archers’ Hall), the President of the Royal Company of Archers; but the younger artist was already a serious rival, and there is evidence in some of Martin’s later works, such as Provost Murdoch of Glasgow (c. 1790; Glasgow, A.G. & Mus.) of stylistic borrowing from Raeburn, particularly in the freer, bolder handling. Martin’s early style depends heavily on Ramsay, and his grander compositions derive from Joshua Reynolds.
David Rodgers. "Martin, David." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T054645 (accessed May 1, 2012).
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