Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion
Encyclopedia
John Martin (painter)
John Martin was an English Romantic painter, engraver and illustrator.-Biography:Martin was born in July 1789, in a one-room family cottage, at Haydon Bridge, near Hexham in Northumberland, the 4th son of Fenwick Martin, a one time fencing master...
. It has been called "The most famous of the British romantic works...;" it was the first of Martin's characteristically dramatic, grand, grandiose large pictures, and anchored the development of the style for which Martin would become famous.
The painting shows a tiny human figure climbing in a mountain landscape. The man struggles to surmount a rocky outcrop beside a pool and waterfall; more jagged cliffs and peaks loom in the background, vastly receding.
Martin later stated that he finished the work in a month. And he wrote, "You may easily guess my anxiety when I overheard the men who were to place it in the frame disputing as to which was the top of the picture! Hope almost forsook me, for much depended on this work." (At the time, Martin had left his £2-per-week job as a glass painter in a china factory, and was attempting to establish himself as an independent artist.)
The artist's anxiety was unnecessary; displayed in the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
exhibition at Somerset House
Somerset House
Somerset House is a large building situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, England, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The central block of the Neoclassical building, the outstanding project of the architect Sir William Chambers, dates from 1776–96. It...
, the picture was a popular success. It was purchased for fifty guineas
Guinea (British coin)
The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813...
by William Manning, a member of the board of governors of the Bank of England
Bank of England
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694, it is the second oldest central bank in the world...
. Reportedly, the Manning's "dying son had been moved by its depiction of the slight solitary figure clinging perilously to a ledge."
"What makes the work so remarkable is its persuasive combination of science and fantasy: while the scale seems beyond terrestrial experience, the attention given to geological and meteorological phenomena is that of the knowledgeable observer." Critics who accept the conventions of Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
in art have appreciated Martin's Sadak; those who do not have regarded the picture as lurid or puzzling.
Sadak is a fictional character in a story in James Ridley
James Ridley
James Kenneth Ridley was an English author, who was educated at University College, Oxford. He served as a chaplain with the British Army...
's Tales of the Genii (two volumes, 1764
1764 in literature
See also: 1763 in literature, other events of 1764, 1765 in literature, list of years in literature.-Events:* January 19 - John Wilkes is expelled from the British House of Commons for seditious libel for his article criticising King George III in The North Briton.* October 15 - While visiting...
); it is a faux-Oriental tale allegedly from a Persian manuscript, but actually the work of Ridley himself. In Ridley's story, the hero Sadak is sent by his Sultan, Amurath, to find the memory-destroying "waters of oblivion." The Sultan maliciously intends to use the waters on Sadak's wife Kalasrade in a seduction attempt. Sadak endures a range of trials — a tempest at sea, a plague, evil genii, a subterranean whirlpool — before he attains his goal. In the end, the Sultan himself falls victim to the water's effect. Amurath dies; Sadak becomes Sultan. Martin's picture portrays Sadak at the climax of his struggle, just before he reaches the waters of oblivion.
(Ridley's tale was popular in its era, and was adapted into a play by Thomas John Dibdin, titled Sadak and Kalasrade, which was staged in 1797
1797 in literature
-Events:* Walter Scott marries Charlotte Carpenter.* Jane Austen finishes a draft of Pride and Prejudice.-New books:*Hannah Webster Foster - The Coquette, or the History of Eliza Wharton *Friedrich Hölderlin - Hyperion, volume 1...
. Henry Bishop mounted an operatic version in 1814.)
The picture was reproduced as a steel-plate etching in 1828. The print bore a poem on the same subject, "Sadak the Wanderer," which was attributed by some to Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
. Modern editors of Shelley are skeptical.
With this and his subsequent paintings, Martin gained a reputation for replicating the effects of stained glass on canvas. He employed a strong "chemical red" hue to express volcanic landscapes.
For many years the painting was known only in a reduced version in the Southampton Art Gallery. The full-size original was discovered in Sweden and acquired by the Saint Louis Art Museum
Saint Louis Art Museum
The Saint Louis Art Museum is one of the principal U.S. art museums, visited by up to a half million people every year. Admission is free through a subsidy from the cultural tax district for St. Louis City and County.Located in Forest Park in St...
in 1983.
Martin followed Sadak with Adam's First Sight of Eve (1813) and Clytie (1814), both shown at the Royal Academy.