Fletcher Martin

Mr. and Mrs. Neil B. Lukow, Merrick, New York (acquired by 1968)

Godel & Co. Fine Art, New York

Acquired from the above in 2012 by the present owner

Binghamton, Roberson Center for the Arts and Sciences, Fletcher Martin: A Thirty Year Retrospective Exhibition, 1968, no. 14, p. 15; p. 22, illustrated in color

Hereward Lester Cooke, Jr., Fletcher Martin, New York, 1977, p. 45; pl. 121, illustrated (detail); pl. 122, illustrated in color

Fletcher Martin was born in 1904 in Palisade, Colorado, one of seven children. He began working as a printer at the age of twelve and later left high school to take jobs as a lumberjack and professional boxer before serving in the U.S. Navy from 1922 to 1926. In the early 1930s he briefly worked as an assistant to Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, an experience that deepened his largely self-taught skills as a muralist, painter, and illustrator. 

During World War II, Martin served as an artist-correspondent for Life Magazine, producing hundreds of sketches depicting the realities of U.S. soldier life. After the war he created illustrations for numerous publications, including Sports Illustrated, and later taught at the Art Students League’s summer school in Woodstock, New York. Known for his muscular realism and powerful portrayals of American life, from labor and sports to wartime experience, Martin became a notable figure within mid-20th-century American Scene painting.