Kensington Garden

Kensington Garden from 1815 by John Martin is an early, relatively intimate landscape before his turn to the apocalyptic sublime. The London park subject shows the young artist working in the established tradition of English landscape painting. Martin, largely self-taught, created apocalyptic visions on an unprecedented scale, filling enormous canvases with architectural fantasy and cosmic drama that made him briefly the most popular painter in Britain.

The garden scene demonstrates Martin's early command of atmospheric landscape painting, with gentler effects than his later dramatic compositions.