Elias Martin

Stockholm 1739 - 1818

Elias Martin's father and uncle were both prominent cabinet makers and young Elias helped in his father's workshop. To develop his drawing skills, he also worked in the workshop of painter-decorator F.C. Schultz. I763, the shipbuilder Fredrik Chapman hired him to work as a decoration draughtsman at the naval base in Sveaborg. Construction in Sveaborg was led by an all-round genius, General Augustin Ehrensvärd, who among other things, was an excellent artist. Ehrensvärd soon realized the talents of Martin and henceforth taught and encouraged him and introduced him to engraving techniques. In Sveaborg, Martin taught drawing to young officers and gradually developed into a notable landscape artist himself.

In 1766, Elias Martin left for Paris to study landscape painting under the guidance of Joseph Vernet, but moved to London already in 1768. Martin adopted the romantic view of English landscape painting and became a fairly successful artist in London. He changed his somewhat clumsy drawing skills to his advantage since capriciousness gave his works an enchanting and naive expressive power. Martin's poetic and sometimes even wild descriptions of nature give an inkling of a Bohemian artist lost in higher spiritual worlds. In reality, Martin was a practical and energetic craftsman whose background in applied arts made him a particularly entrepreneurial artist. Elias Martin planned a wide circulation for his works as engravings and therefore invited his younger brother Johan Fredrik to London to study graphic techniques and to become the engraver of Elias's works.

King Gustav III invited the brothers back from London in 1780. An enormous field of activity awaited them in Sweden since the enthusiastic public wanted the national heritage and ways of life to be preserved. Martin is best known for his lively and colourful depictions of Stockholm, but apart from that, he experimented with all kinds of themes and methods with idiosyncratic results.