John Martin's Heaven and Hell at Laing Art Gallery

THE TELEGRAPH
March 28, 2011

"Belshazzar’s Feast" by John Martin

UNITED KINGDOM - When the 19th-century visionary painter John Martin exhibited his best known canvas Belshazzar’s Feast at the British Institution in February 1821, the 8ft high and 5ft long picture had to be cordoned off to keep the crowds at arm’s length. For Belshazzar’s Feast is painting as theatre. As much as it is about art, the Laing Art Gallery’s retrospective of Martin’s work is about the economics of making a living as an artist in the first half of the 19th century. More than 5,000 people paid an entrance fee to see Belshazzar’s Feast and many of them bought the popular mezzotint after it. In the hope that prints after their paintings would hang in front parlours from Sidcup to Surbiton, artists pitched both the subject and style of their paintings to a Bible-reading, philistine public. [link]