Figures Seated by a Lake in a Wooded Landscape (1820): Art, History and Details

Figures Seated by a Lake in a Wooded Landscape (1820) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is John Martin (British, 1789–1854).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Before he became famous as a history painter, John Martin earned a living by teaching and painting watercolors. His so-called sepia drawings, landscapes in monochromatic wash, found an enthusiastic audience. The artist’s method for painting foliage in these drawings was idiosyncratic; form and texture were created almost entirely in negative spaces without the use of line. Highlighted leaves, bark, vines, and roots were delineated with the white of the paper, creating a peculiar, instantly recognizable, spongy effect.

Object facts

• Title: Figures Seated by a Lake in a Wooded Landscape
• Date: 1820
• Creator attribution: John Martin (British, 1789–1854)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: brown wash and point of brush with graphite underdrawing
• Dimensions: Sheet: 19.8 x 26.6 cm (7 13/16 x 10 1/2 in.)
• Collection: DR - British
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1997.38

A detail from the museum

John Martin's biographer believed that his early landscapes, such as this one, were inspired by classical texts by Ovid.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lemonedes, Heather. British Drawings: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.