Sadak auf der Suche nach den Wassern des Vergessens

Martin's Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion from 1812 was his first exhibited work and immediately established the visual formula that would make him famous—a solitary heroic figure in a landscape of overwhelming geological and supernatural grandeur. The subject from James Ridley's Tales of the Genii (1764), a popular Oriental tale collection, depicted a prince climbing a mountain of supernatural height in search of magical waters, giving Martin a vehicle for his extraordinary vision of landscape as an arena of cosmic drama. The painting was immediately purchased at the Royal Academy exhibition, and its commercial success encouraged the development of the apocalyptic pictorial language that would produce Belshazzar's Feast and his celebrated series of biblical catastrophes. The work's combination of Oriental literary source and visionary landscape anticipated the Romantic movement's systematic exploration of the sublime.

The vertiginous rock face creates an overwhelming sense of height and danger, with the tiny figure of Sadak providing scale for the vast geological formations. Martin's dramatic chiaroscuro and precise geological rendering create a convincingly nightmarish landscape.