Description:Following the Coronation of Queen Victoria on 28th June 1838 a flurry of noted artists sought to capture the event on canvas. John Martin was amongst this group but he approached the task with what we would nowadays call a ‘spin’. He planned not to simply capture the central event but to include the entire congregation, not just in an impressionistic way but in full portrait detail. This was a very cunning ruse on his part as the attendees were invited to sit for him – the images of those who declined were captured from portraits. The resultant visits to his studio paid dividends – pictures from his collection were viewed and purchased – as were the individual small preparatory portrait images once the Coronation painting was complete. All in all this proved an excellent way of raising his profile among the aristocracy. A visit from Prince Albert to view the Coronation painting resulted in the commission of a painting from a proposed trilogy of works that expanded on an earlier work, The Deluge – The Eve of the Flood. Not to be outdone, the third in the series, The Assuaging of the Waters, was quickly commissioned by Harriet, 2nd Duchess of Sutherland. A short series of letters between the Duchess and John Martin ensued and the Duchess made sure that the subject matter was in keeping with her ideas of what was acceptable to be hung in her abode. Not for Harriet Martin’s uncomfortable representations of corpses and slimy sea creatures: these were to be replaced with sea-shells and vegetation. Martin’s biographer, William Feaver describes The Assuaging of the Waters as showing “… a few relics of the antediluvian world preserved, like trinkets, on the slowly surfacing peaks of Mount Ararat.” Feaver, of course, was quite unaware when he wrote his book, that Harriet had expurgated the original, and far more sinister, composition.
The first version of The Deluge was painted in 1826 and shown at the British Institution. Martin quoted from Byron’s poem Heaven and Earth in the pamphlet that accompanied the image:
Ye wilds that look eternal,
Where shall we fly?
Not to the mountains high,
For now there torrents rush with double roar
To meet the ocean.
The painting remained unsold and in 1828 was reproduced in mezzotint by Martin in his print studio. Following successful sales he went on to paint a second version in 1834 that was shown in the Paris Salon of 1835, where it was awarded a Gold Medal. The idea of a trilogy of paintings on this subject had been in Martin’s mind for some time: a watercolour entitled The Assuaging of the Waters had been exhibited in 1838. According to Feaver’s footnotes it would seem likely that the oil version of The Eve of the Deluge had been begun before Prince Albert’s visit in 1840.
The extraordinary style of his works, with the monumental cliffs and scenes of wild devastation had become a trademark of Martin and date from his early works. Martin had come from a very religious, but humble, background, born and brought up in Haydon Bridge, Tyneside; a region of towering cliffs, crags, wild moorland, lead mines, iron foundries and ruins such as Hadrian’s Wall. Catastrophic floods occurred locally several times during his childhood, with reports of coffins and skeletons being washed out of the ground. These early visual memories were to provide ideal material for the sublime and picturesque landscapes of his paintings. Feaver suggests “… the artist of flood, apocalypse, and disordered timescales, could not have been born at a more appropriate time or in a more formative place.” The trilogy of works are now located in The Royal Collection (The Eve of the Deluge); Yale Center for British Art (The Deluge); and The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (The Assuaging of the Waters). The Coronation is owned by the Tate Gallery. The trilogy were never publicly exhibited together until 1997 when they were brought together by the Yale Center for British Art for an exhibition entitled "John Martin: Visions of the Biblical Flood."
The image above has been reproduced with the kind permission of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Visit their website by clicking on the link below.
John Martin (English, 1789-1854)
The Assuaging of the Waters, 1840
Oil on Canvas
56 1/2 x 86 1/4 in. (143.5 x 219.1 cm)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Whitney Warren Jr. Bequest Fund in memory of Mrs. Adolph B. Spreckels, 1989.73