Homer Dodge Martin was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 artist, particularly known for his landscapes

Landscape art

Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...

.

Biography

Martin was born at Albany, New York

Albany, New York

Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...

. A pupil for a short time of William Hart

William Hart (painter)

William Hart , was a Scottish-born American landscape and cattle painter, and Hudson River School artist. His younger brother, James McDougal Hart, was also a Hudson River School artist, and the two painted similar subjects...

, his earlier work was closely aligned with the Hudson River School

Hudson River school

The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism...

. He was elected as associate of the National Academy of Design

National Academy of Design

The National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts, founded in New York City as the National Academy of Design – known simply as the "National Academy" – is an honorary association of American artists founded in 1825 by Samuel F. B. Morse, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E...

, New York, in 1868, and a full academician in 1874. During a trip to Europe in 1876 he was captivated by the Barbizon school

Barbizon school

The Barbizon school of painters were part of a movement towards realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870...

, 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. At Villerville he painted his Harp of the Winds, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

, New York. Examples of his work are in many important American museums. He died at St. Paul, Minnesota.

Secondary bibliography

• E. G. Martin, Homer Martin, a Remininiscence (New York, 1904)
• Samuel Isham
  Samuel Isham
  Samuel Isham was an American portrait and figure painter, born in New York. He graduated from Yale in 1875 and studied law, but after being admitted to the bar he turned to art and studied in Paris at the Académie Julian. He exhibited at both Paris salons and at the larger American exhibitions,...
  
  , History of American Painting (New York, 1905)
• F. J. Mather
  Frank Jewett Mather
  Frank Jewett Mather was an American art critic and professor.He was born at Deep River, Conn., and graduated from Williams College in 1889 and from Johns Hopkins in 1892: he studied also at Berlin and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris...
  
  , Homer Martin, Poet in Landscape (New York, 1912)
• F. F. Sherman, "Landscape of Homer Dodge Martin," in Art in America, volume iii (New York, 1915)
• D. H. Carroll, Fifty-Eight Paintings by Homer Martin (New York, 1913), reproductions