John Martin - Apocalypse
The title of this exhibition derives from the huge triptych painted in the last decade of John Martin’s life, which became his most famous achievement — visions of the ‘The Last Judgment’, ‘The Great Day of His Wrath’ and ‘The Plains of Heaven’.
Anne Roberts
Martin, a younger contemporary of Turner and Constable, was born in 1789, the year of the French Revolution, in Haydon Bridge, near Hexham. Much of the awe-inspiring scenery in his work reflects the wildness of the Northumbrian crags, where man is dwarfed by the elements, as well as by the iron furnaces of the Tyne Valley — a sight completely new in the early industrial revolution.
