American painter. He was largely self-taught, although he studied briefly with James MacDougal Hart and was encouraged by Erastus Dow Palmer. He specialized in scenes of Lake George, Lake Ontario, and the Adirondacks in New York State. These are depictions of the wilderness, exclusive of figures, in the realistic manner of the Hudson River school. There are preliminary pencil sketches for several early oil paintings. After 1876, when Martin first visited England and became casually acquainted with Whistler, his painting style became looser and more preoccupied with colour. It was at this time that he started working in watercolour. In the early 1880s he spent four years in France, settling in the Normandy coast near Trouville. In 1886 Martin returned to America, where he painted French, Adirondack, and Newport landscapes from memory as his eyesight was failing. His work was exhibited at the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893.
