Painting and Painters

Baum

Do you recall Marty working on any special paintings?

Martinez

Yes. He was still painting — from his many sketches — Paris scenes after his return from Europe. After the earthquake deposited him in Piedmont he turned out large numbers of paintings of our beautiful Piedmont hills and view of the Bay. His trip to the desert was responsible for many lovely canvases of the Indians and Indian country. Of course he made many paintings of me, too.

Speaking of portraits, I have a delightful story of the portrait Marty was commissioned to paint of David Starr Jordan. I think Searles was head of the alumni at Stanford at the time and he was to pick the artist to do a portrait of David Starr Jordan. He was a Bohemian Club

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member, had met Marty, and liked him very much. He told Marty, "We want a portrait of Dr. Jordan and we want you to do it." So the date was set, Marty was to come down to Stanford and meet Dr. Jordan and plan the portrait.

Marty was ushered into Dr. Jordan's laboratory at the moment Dr. Jordan was at his big desk studying beautifully colored plates - reproductions of fish for his latest book. He was giving them his careful scrutiny, as the authority on fish he was in the scientific world. Marty was enchanted. He asked Dr. Jordan, "Do you mind if I make a sketch of you sitting here?" He said, "Oh no, not at all. I'd be delighted." So Marty made a very quick drawing and a color sketch of him sitting there looking at this book of gorgeous plates, and back of him, on a shelf, great jars of brilliantly colored fish.

Searles and Dr. Jordan were delighted with the sketches and a "sitting" was planned a few days later. In the meantime, Mrs. Jordan heard of the plan and registered a vehement opposition to the sitting. She insisted on an official portrait of Dr. Jordan in cap and gown, befitting the dignity of a President of Stanford.

Marty was furious and refused to do a conventional portrait. "He's an interesting personality and what a setting - a life time's work in view that gave him his honors in the scientific world! An official portrait with a cap and gown is not in my line and I won't do it." Searles was quite upset and Marty insisted on giving up the commission.

However, he did make a small sketch of Dr. Jordan which I gave

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to Dr. W.K. Fisher, which I think Fisher planned to give to Stanford. Dr. Fisher, you know, was the world authority on starfish. He was one of the first organizers and developers of Stanford's Marine Biology Station at Pacific Grove.

Dr. Fisher had just retired but still kept his office at the Station to carry on scientific work still unfinished. Also, in his leisure time, he painted portraits. We cherish the canvases he painted of Harriet Dean, myself, and Kai, which gave us the opportunity to acquire a good friend. It was through him that we met Dr. Cornelis B. Van Niel whom Dr. Fisher declared was the greatest biologist in the world.

So an excellent academic portrait of Dr. Jordan was done by Mrs. Richarson and Mrs. Jordan was satisfied. Years later Searles told Marty both he and Jordan regretted that Marty had not gone on with the portrait they both liked.

Baum

I've seen the collection of Marty's paintings at the Oakland Art Museum and they represent various periods in his life. What did you think of his paintings?

Martinez

Well, Marty went through three periods; in his Mexican period his colors were colonial Spanish, followed by the Impressionist period in Paris. My favorites were the Impressionist period of Paris with its slightly Spanish coloring. His work was never the vivid, light colors of the French Impressionists. While he loved impressionism, his impressionism still had a slightly Spanish flavor.

In later years, his first canvases of the desert were superb "impressionism" in the warm and rich colors of the desert. The

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desert lends itself beautifully to moods and vivid impressions. Marty always reflected the period and culture of his time. His youthful canvases were reflections of Indian culture; then he became a Spanish painter when he went to Spain and was enchanted with the coloring of Velasquez.

Baum

I read in a newspaper clipping on different local artists a comment calling Martinez and Keith "tobacco juice painters" because of their dark colors.

Martinez

He never had that period. It was a Spanish period, beautiful grays and neutral greens, like the one he admired so much — Velasquez.

There is no darkness at all in his portrait of himself, which is in his Spanish period — deep grays and rich browns. That picture disappeared for twenty years. It was loaned to the de Young Museum for an exhibition and not returned. Ten years later, after Marty's death, while we were making his album, I ran across a paper stating that the museum had borrowed it. So I got in contact with the new curator there who promised to look into it. They found it and sent it to me, and I put it with Dr. Porter's collection. Now it's in the collection at the Oakland Gallery.

I don't care for Marty's last period except for his cloud drawings — over the Bay, the hills and the desert — in which he captured the elusive moods of nature. Then modernism came in. I think that threw Marty off.

I'll never forget when Gelett Burgess came up to the studio. We'd been married about three months. He'd just come back from Paris and had written the first article on "Les Fauves" for the

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Architectural Record in 1907. He called it "Is This Art?" He had reproductions of and photos of the young Fauves — Picasso, Matisse, Vlaminick — oh, there were about five or six, the original group. Of course Marty admired extravagantly Gauguin and Van Gogh and Cezanne. Marty loved Gauguin because he was part Indian, too; Peruvian Indian. And he loved his color, and he admired Van Gogh, too. The vogue for them was well established by 1907.

Harriet Dean went to the first Armory show in New York, brought by Walter Pach, of "Les Fauves" which caused a big uproar. We knew Walter Pach well, too, and were very fond of him. Walter Pach and Frederick Mortimer Clapp [director of the Frick Collection, New York] were friends of Marty's. I was very fond of Walter Pach's wife, Magda, a charming person. Walter was giving a series of talks at the University of California summer session during the war. While he was giving his lectures Magda and I used to sit out under the trees on the campus and talk about art. She was very intelligent and had an excellent background in the moderns, too. Sometimes she would take care of her little son and Kai while I attended Walter's lecture. Pach, at that time, was making the moderns familiar to Americans. He was one of the first to write on modern art for American periodicals.

Fred Clapp was staying with Edna and Porter Garnett and the three of them spent many Sundays with us in the old studio. He was then lecturing on art for the University of California, Extension Service. We did not miss one of those lectures for Fred had an intensity of feeling and depth of perception that made his

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talks vivid and unforgettable. After the summer session was over, he went to Europe to work on his art book on the Italian painter Jacopo da Pontormo for his doctorate at the Sorbonne. For his study of Pontormo, he spent much time in Italy. It was there that he met his wife, Maud, whose father was England's ambassador to Italy. The setting for this romance was a palace in Florence where they lived at the time.

Frederick Clapp was a poet, too, and an excellent one. Marty kept in contact with Fred through letters for many years — following his career until he became curator of the Frick Collection. He lived in New York and we saw Fred and Maud on their summer visits to California.

Porter Garnett was one of Marty's greatest admirers and he and Edna were very close friends.

Baum

Do you recall the squabble in 1927 in the Bohemian Club when the art committee decided to exclude radical modernists and the other artists got angry about it?

Martinez

I just vaguely remember an uproar at that time, but I don't remember anything about it.

Baum

It wasn't clear whether Marty had had a part in this or not.

Martinez

You could count on Marty to take the radicals' side, so he'd be on the offending end.

Baum

Lucien Labaudt was the one who was going to be excluded.

Martinez

Well, Marty wouldn't stand for that. The more radical they were the better. The "modern movement" was well established by this time and

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Marty would be in opposition to sanity in art and so on. [Laughter]

I remember Spencer Macky was at the head of that group that led—the sanity in art group.

Baum

In 1930 Diego Rivera came to San Francisco to do the mural decorations for the new stock exchange. Did Marty meet with him?

Martinez

Marty often used to go over to see Diego Rivera. At that time Rivera was too busy to come to Piedmont, though Orozco did come up to Piedmont on his trip to San Francisco. We used to go over to see Rivera working on his murals at the time of the fair. Occasionally Marty and Rivera had luncheons together and reminisced about Paris. I only saw Rivera's wife, Frieda Kahlo, once. She had come to pick him up and take him home.

There are quite a number of Marty's canvases in private collections. Macbeth handled his work in New York and Marty never bothered to find out who bought them. Many of his best works — the beautiful canvases he painted of the desert — were in Charley Sutro's collection and were lost when his house in Carmel burned down. Fire seemed to be his nemesis. A fine collection of his canvases which were in Dr. Daniel Crosby's home — his doctor in Piedmont — were lost when his Piedmont home burned down. Also, many a private collection was lost in the San Francisco fire. In those three fires, probably one quarter of Marty's work was lost.

Sutro had the best of the desert work — five paintings and many drawings. Dr. William Porter started collecting early in their friendship. He spent much effort and many years gathering a representative

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collection of Marty's life work. Porter Garnett had three exquisite small paintings of Paris. Arnold Genthe had several sketches of Paris and a painting of dancers in a bistro in Paris. It's hard to trace much of his work. The Henry Collection in Portland, I think, has a couple of canvases. Bohemian Club members often bought Marty's work, but Marty never kept any records. There's a beautiful canvas of the desert, one of his finest, given to the doctor who brought Kai into the world, Dr. Otto Westerfield. He died and what became of this canvas I don't know.

I gave Kai, to eventually give to the Gallery, the beautiful color photograph that Arnold Genthe made of Marty. Genthe also took a number of color photographs of me. I had masses of blonde hair that was the color of polished brass — with a slight green tone in it that he declared he'd never seen before. He exhibited them in New York and many viewers declared hair could not be that color. He promised to send me one of the color plates, but in his busy life in New York the promise was forgotten.

Marty was an excellent cartoonist. The one of Genthe is in his scrapbook in the Oakland Art Museum. The only person Marty said was impossible to catch was Jack London. His features were too regular. He said, "I can't make a good cartoon of you. There's nothing to grasp in your face."

At the New York World's Fair in 1940, there was a bronze plaque with all the names of the foreign born who had added to the culture of America — Padre Sierra, William Keith, and Marty. Of course,

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Marty was very proud of that. After the Fair closed the bronze plaque was moved to the New York Public Library, and that's an excellent place in which to keep alive the memory of those men who added to our culture. At the time, a magazine called The Common Ground carried the lives of the men on the plaque.

Also, the Legislature of the State of California, on the day Marty's death was announced over the radio, paid him the honor of special recognition. Professor Jones, representing the school teachers of California at the Legislature, announced the death of Marty and requested he be duly honored. They agreed, and after Professor Jones' tribute to Marty, they observed a moment's silence and adjourned an hour ahead of time and the lavishly printed honor was sent to me. It's in Marty's album now in the possession of the Oakland Art Gallery.