Conrad Martens

Conrad Martens (1801–1878) was an English-born landscape painter, best known for his watercolour and oil views of Sydney and the east coast of Australia. He was born in London, the son of an Austrian-born father, and studied landscape painting under the watercolourist Copley Fielding. In 1833 he joined HMS Beagle as artist on its second voyage, replacing Augustus Earle, and left the ship at Valparaíso in 1834. After travelling through Tahiti and New Zealand he reached Sydney in 1835 and remained there for the rest of his life. He painted views of Sydney Harbour, such as Sydney from Rose Bay (1840) and North Head, Sydney Harbour (1854), and made journeys through the Hunter Valley and southern Queensland. During the 1840s recession he turned to lithographs so that he could sell the same view many times. He remained a lifelong friend of Charles Darwin. From 1863 he worked as Assistant Librarian at the Parliamentary Library. Martens died in North Sydney in August 1878.