Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion information

Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion is an 1812 oil painting by John Martin. It has been called "the most famous of the British romantic works";^[1] it was the first of Martin's characteristically dramatic, grand, grandiose large pictures, and anchored the development of the style for which Martin would become famous.

The painting shows a human figure climbing in a mountain landscape. The man struggles to surmount a rocky outcrop beside a pool and waterfall; more jagged cliffs and peaks loom in the background, vastly receding. Martin later stated that he finished the work in a month. And he wrote, "You may easily guess my anxiety when I overheard the men who were to place it in the frame disputing as to which was the top of the picture! Hope almost forsook me, for much depended on this work."^[2] (At the time, Martin had left his £2-per-week job as a glass painter in a china factory, and was attempting to establish himself as an independent artist.)

The artist's anxiety was unnecessary; displayed in the Royal Academy exhibition at Somerset House, the picture was a popular success. It was purchased for fifty guineas by William Manning, a member of the board of governors of the Bank of England. Reportedly, Manning's "dying son had been moved by its depiction of the slight solitary figure clinging perilously to a ledge."^[3]

For many years the painting was known only in a reduced version in the Southampton City Art Gallery. The full-size original was discovered in Sweden and acquired by the Saint Louis Art Museum in 1983.^[4]