Homer Dodge Martin
Homer Dodge Martin (1836–1897) was an American landscape painter born in Albany, New York. Largely self-taught, he began with carefully described landscapes associated with the Hudson River school. After moving to Manhattan in 1862, he became a friend of John La Farge, who encouraged a softer, more poetic approach. Whistler's painting also offered an example of muted colour and less sharply defined forms.
Martin lived in France from 1881 to 1886, encountering the work of Corot, the Barbizon painters and the early Impressionists. His landscapes increasingly depended on simplified forms and recollection rather than exhaustive detail. The Harp of the Winds, painted in 1895, brings that approach to a view of poplars beside the Seine. Deteriorating eyesight and ill health affected his later years; he moved to Minnesota and died in St Paul in 1897.
The watercolours represented here offer a close view of his coastal subjects. Near Newport sets a low, rocky shore beneath an open sky, while Landscape describes coast and water with looser coloured marks. The sheets do not depend on large incidents or prominent figures. Their interest lies in proportion, the meeting of land and sea, and the changes through which watercolour establishes distance. Preserving their recorded size keeps those small decisions available to patient looking. The surrounding paper matters.