Born in Albany, New York, the same year as Alexander Wyant, on 28 October 1836, Martin forged a career that spanned the Hudson River School style to more of a plein-air style that approximated impressionism. Popular with the earlier critics, Martin was praised with hyperbole: "his finest canvases looked as if no one but God and he had ever seen the places pictured" (Sherman, 1917, p. 4) but was justly allocated a respectful place in the pantheon of American landscape painters. Martin was the son of Homer Martin and Sarah Dodge. Martin's future wife Elizabeth verified that he made drawings as a child (Martin, 1904, pp. 4-5) and a lot of what he learned was self-taught. Erastus Dow Palmer, the sculptor, recognized Mart...