Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria |
Martens was born in London and trained as a landscape artist.
He joined Charles Darwin on the Beagle as an artist, and eventually reached Sydney in 1835.
He gave lessons in drawing and painting from a studio in Pitt Street and sold his watercolours to well-off Sydney residents and landowners whose houses and properties he painted. He is well known for his panoramic scenes of Sydney Harbour and its foreshores. He died in Sydney.
Source: Extracted from: Wrigley, J.W. (2013) Eucalypt Flowers, National Library of Australia, Canberra.
Portrait: by Maurice Felton from collection of State Library of NSW