One of 15 watercolours in the collection made by Conrad Martens to illustrate Robert Fitzroy's 'Narrative of the Voyage of the Beagle' (1839): this one is in vol. 2, p. 248. It depicts HMS 'Beagle' entering Berkeley Sound, East Falkland, with the shoreline on its left, along with mountains in the distance. That occurred in March 1834 when it visited the Falklands for the second time in its voyage. This is plate 8 in the sequence of the second volume of Fitzroy's 'Narrative'. See 'Conrad Martens's "Beagle" Pictures', no.169, in R.D.Keynes (ed.) 'The Beagle Record...' (CUP, 1979), pp.389-402. For a backing fragment with an old inscribed title, see PAF6227.1.

Martens (1801-78) was one of the three artist sons of a German merchant settled and married in London, where he trained as a landscape watercolour draughtsman. His initial experience was painting views in the English West Country. In 1833 he was at Rio de Janeiro en route to India, where he had been invited to go on a three-year cruise by Captain Blackwood of HMS 'Hyacinth', when he heard that Fitzroy of the 'Beagle', then at Montevideo, was looking for someone to replace his draughtsman, Augustus Earle, whose health finally compelled him to leave Fitzroy's hydrographic expedition there. Martens went to Montevideo in October, made a good impression and was engaged on the same basis as Earle, victualled by the Admiralty but paid by Fitzroy. On 13 November 1833 Charles Darwin wrote in a letter home to his sister Caroline: 'Poor Earl has never been well enough since leaving England & now his health is so entirely broken up that he leaves us –& Mr Marten, a pupil of C[opley] Fielding & excellent landscape drawer has joined us. He is a pleasant person & like all birds of that class, full up to the mouth with enthusiasm' (Keynes, as above, p.169). Martens left the ship at Valparaiso in August 1834, when Fitzroy had to reorganise and no longer had space for him, as well as owing to the private costs he was incurring. He went on briefly to Tahiti, New Zealand and then Sydney by mid-1835. When the 'Beagle' caught up there in 1836, Martens again met Fitzroy and Darwin, sold a few drawings to them and arranged to send finished watercolours to Fitzroy in England for engraving in his 'Narrative'. In this, some were reproduced in small-format groups of three to a page and a few used to illustrate parts of overall 'Beagle' operations both before and after Martens was on board. Sydney remained Martens's home for the rest of his life and he and Darwin continued their early friendship by correspondence. He married in 1837, raised a family, painted widely in Australia and became a significant artist and teacher there. The drawings which Martens sent for engraving purposes to England remained thereafter with Fitzroy and 14 of the present group (PAF6227-42) comprise some of them. They were presented in 1973 by Miss Hilda M. Smyth, a great-niece of his second wife, as previously agreed with her sister (d.1971). The exceptions are this one (PAF6227), which was separately acquired in 1967, and PAF6239, which is also part of the Smyth gift but is by Earle.