It has been said that there is a Homeric quality in his landscapes. Clearly this is no attempt to place him in relation to other painters, as we regard Homer among other poets; but is a reference to the big significance of his work, to those elemental qualities which we habitually associate with the poetry of Homer. The bigness of Martin was principally that of a big intellect. It had its inner shrine, where he kept to himself the sacredness of his deepest artistic inspiration; an outer court, wherein he mingled with other men of intellect, and its sunny entrance steps, where, beyond the shadow of what was to him most real, he could prove himself to be “a fellow of infinite jest,” a brilliant _raconteur_, one that all who knew him loved. And the love for Martin one finds to have been greatest among those who knew him best, and were most aware of the deeper qualities that underlay his wit and jollity.
There is, indeed, a rare attractiveness in this combination of depth and brilliant surface. It is so easy to take life seriously or hilariously, if one is formed that way; but to be big with seriousness in season, and big with sportiveness betimes, is the quality of an extra large-souled man. Of a man, indeed; for the quality is essentially a masculine one, and rare even among men, particularly in art, so large a portion of which is feminine in significance. I suppose most of us feel this in comparing, for example, Tennyson with Browning; and, consciously or unconsciously, have had a feeling of it in the presence of many pictures, even by acknowledged masters. Not improbably it is the latent reason of so much indifference toward pictures in this country by persons otherwise cultivated. Our past history, as well as the immediate present, has demanded qualities essentially masculine, and so many people instinctively suspect the superabundance of the feminine in painting, or have regarded it merely as a pastime on the part of the painter, and as suitable chiefly for decorating the walls of a drawing-room. The one class has ignored the claims of painting; the other committed itself unreservedly to that kind of picture, which is least of all the product of intellect, or likely to make any demand upon the intelligence. They have found it difficult to take a painter and his work seriously, or would be, perhaps, surprised to find that such an attitude toward art could ever be expected of them. They would find incomprehensible the suggestion that a man may be found who puts into a picture as much mind and force of mind as another man puts into the upbuilding of a great business; that the qualities of mind expended in each case may be similar in degree, and not altogether different in kind; power to forecast the issue, and to labour strenuously for it, with a capacity for organization, for selecting, rejecting, and coördinating; a gift of distinguishing between essentials and non-essentials, and of converting sources of weakness into strength, so that the issue becomes in each case a monument to the intellect of its creator. And when one finds, as with Martin, that these big qualities of mind have been directed to the expression of what is grand in nature, least transitory, most fundamental, one begins to have that respect for his art which must precede all true appreciation, and to discover that it has a close relation to what is noble and most endearing in life--a deep, abiding reality. During his lifetime comparatively few appreciated the significance of his work, but it is of the kind that time is justifying.