Artist

John Martin (1789–1854) is best-known as a painter of religious subjects and fantastic compositions. He achieved huge popular acclaim with his historical landscape paintings which featured melodramatic scenes of apocalyptic events taken from the Bible and other mythological sources. In addition to being a painter, John Martin was a mezzotint engraver. For significant periods of his life, he earned more from his engravings than his paintings. Martin was a key influence on Thomas Cole (1801–1848), one of the founding members of the Hudson River School. Others inspired by his compositions included Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Brontës—a print of 'Belshazzar's Feast' hung on the parlour wall of the Brontë parsonage in Haworth.