Edwin and Angelina

Martin's Edwin and Angelina from 1816 depicts characters from Oliver Goldsmith's popular poem 'The Hermit' (published as 'Edwin and Angelina' in 1765), in which a young woman disguised as a pilgrim finds refuge with a hermit who turns out to be her lost lover. The sentimental literary subject was popular with early nineteenth-century painters who found in it an opportunity to combine romantic narrative with picturesque landscape. Martin's version was an early work, painted before his breakthrough with Belshazzar's Feast in 1820, and shows him working in a more conventional Romantic mode before developing the distinctive apocalyptic visual language of his mature work. The literary source connected his painting to the continuing fashion for Goldsmith, whose Vicar of Wakefield and Deserted Village remained central texts of English literary culture in the Regency period.

The literary figures are set within a landscape rendered with Martin's atmospheric approach, the natural setting providing emotional context for the literary subject.