The Adirondack Camp

This painting depicts a camp scene in the foreground with a lake in the background. There is a white tent on the left, two figures in the center towards the lake, and a red structure on the right. It is said that the two figures are the two sons of the artist. The painting is signed in the lower-left corner.

Mr. G. H. Buck writes concerning this painting on April 27, 1911; “I have always liked that period of Martin’s work. It was a period when he was himself and was still free from the influences of European traditions and techniques, and I do not hesitate saying that I consider Adirondack Camp a very fine example of Martin’s work.”

The painting was purchased from Moulton & Ricketts in 1911.

Homer Dodge Martin was born in Albany, New York on October 28, 1836, and was the youngest of four children. In 1849, he completed his formal education and began working at his father’s carpentry store. Soon thereafter, Martin pursued work at his cousin’s architectural firm. It was reported, due to astigmatism, he was unable to draw verticals, which kept him from participating in the Civil War. Eventually, the sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer, who mentored young artists in Albany, convinced Martin’s father to allow him to pursue painting.

Martin’s earliest stylistic influences were that of the Hudson River School, producing panoramic and detailed sweeping landscape scenes. At sixteen, Martin made a modest living selling his small views of New York and New England. At first, he sourced his paintings from the Berkshires, but gradually widened his scope to include the Catskills, Adirondacks, and White Mountains.

After marrying Elizabeth Gilbert, he moved to Manhattan and Martin opened his own studio in the Tenth Street building. He became friends with artist John La Farge, who encouraged him to soften and poeticize his style. Martin’s use of softer, muted colors and forms with blurred edges was influenced by the paintings of James McNeill Whistler.

From 1881 to 1886 he lived in France and soon was influenced by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and the French Barbizon artists and the early work of the impressionists.

Throughout his life, Martin suffered a series of ailments, a deepening sense of melancholy, and progressive deterioration of his eyesight. As blindness encroached he moved to Minnesota hoping that the clear air would prove emollient. He died in St. Paul in 1897.