MARTIN, MARIA

born July 3, 1796, Charleston, S.C., U.S. died Dec. 27, 1863, Columbia, S.C. American artist, known for her fine and highly accurate watercolours of flora and fauna, especially those done in collaboration with the naturalist and artist John James Audubon. Martin early displayed interest in the natural sciences and in art. Little is known of her schooling. From 1827 she lived mainly in the home of a married older sister who was frequently ill. Her brother-in-law, John Bachman, was a devoted naturalist, and in 1831 Martin met Audubon. Audubon's friendship with her and the Bachman family was strengthened by his two sons' marriages in 1837 and 1839 to two of Martin's nieces. With instruction from Audubon, Martin began developing her artistic talent, and before long she was actively assisting him in his work by painting in backgrounds for his watercolour portraits of birds. Her plants and insects were executed with remarkable scientific accuracy and with the artist's eye for colour and composition. A great many of the colour plates in Birds of America and of those plates later issued separately in the United States featured her work, and it is possible that some of her watercolours of birds may have been touched up and used by Audubon as well. In this work she was one of his three principal assistants and the only woman. Her sister died in 1846, and in December 1848 Martin married her widowed brother-in-law. She assisted him in his editorial work for Audubon's Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (184654), and she also contributed a number of drawings to John Edwards Holbrook's North American Herpetology (183642). Audubon named the Maria's woodpecker (Picus martinae), a subspecies of hairy woodpecker, for her.