Portrait of Sir Thomas Martineau (1828-1893)

Francis Montague Holl's Portrait of Sir Thomas Martineau (1887) depicts Thomas Martineau (1828–1893), a Birmingham solicitor, businessman, and public figure who served as the town's mayor in 1868. The Martineaus were a distinguished Birmingham family of Unitarian heritage — related to the philosopher Harriet Martineau — with deep roots in the city's intellectual and civic life. Holl, painting this portrait in the last year of his life, brings his characteristic psychological gravity to this image of a prosperous civic leader. The work is held in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

The portrait employs the formal conventions of Victorian civic portraiture — dark background, controlled lighting, careful rendering of the sitter's face — with the particular psychological intensity that distinguished Holl from more routine practitioners. The paint is applied with confidence, giving appropriate weight to the rendering of age and character in the face.