This is a unique interpretation of the original done in reverse with some enhanced lighting.

The drawing illustrates the Biblical story (Exodus 14) of Moses releasing the waters of the Red Sea, after they had miraculously parted to allow the fleeing Israelites to cross, thereby drowning the pursuing Egyptian army.

Employing a panoramic composition to magnificent effect, Martin plays with the scale of the figures and the scenery to maximise the epic nature of the drama. The emotional force of this scene of deliverance and retribution is heightened by a blood red sunset below a sweeping black sky.

Although Martin is best known for his spectacular oil paintings and mezzotints (a tonal print technique that was ideally suited to capturing his bold use of light and shade for dramatic effect) illustrating John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Bible, he also created a series of framed ‘exhibition watercolours’, which in scale and visual impact were intended to compete for attention and patronage with oil paintings.

Martin’s mezzotints of Biblical subjects, such as The Destruction of Pharaoh’s Host published in 1833, were hugely popular and influential with admirers including Charles Dickens and the Bronte sisters who grew up with them on the walls of their father’s parsonage.

Martin’s large-scale watercolour treatment of the same subject from three years later was intended to capitalise on his popular success, and The Destruction of Pharoah’s Host demonstrates his bold use of the medium in the eye-catching brightness of the colours, with the tonal range expanded through extensive use of black pigment, bodycolour, and gum arabic.

Martin’s artistic reputation did not endure – despite the influence he played in shaping the epic scale and grandeur of Biblical and historical epics in films by directors like Cecil B. DeMille – as his standing suffered from the disapproval of the art critic John Ruskin and the artist’s focus later in his life shifted to planning ambitious engineering schemes to deliver clean water and an efficient sewage system to London.

The subsequent and enduring shift in taste away from the use of watercolour for grandiose narrative subjects, allied to a longstanding critical downplaying of the significance of the medium to British art, meant that Martin’s stature as a watercolourist was long overlooked, until interest in his work began to revive in the early 1950s.

Martin’s importance is now more widely recognised and celebrated, and the ambition, boldness and grandeur of The Destruction of Pharoah’s Host exemplifies his unique contribution to British watercolour history.

This incredibly dramatic picture captures the imaginative and apocalyptic subjects for which Martin is best known.

Working in watercolour played a significant part in Martin’s art throughout his career although he is now best remembered for his exhibition works in oil. The Destruction of Pharaoh’s Host not only demonstrates Martin’s mastery of the medium but underlines how he employed it to achieve emotional and dramatic effects of a subtlety which were impossible in his larger scale oil paintings. The Destruction of Pharaoh’s Host numbers amongst the greatest of Martin’s watercolours.

Martin was born near Hexham, Northumberland. He was apprenticed first to an heraldic coach painter in Newcastle, and then to a china painter with whom he came to London in 1806. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1811, and at the British Institution, where he won premiums in 1817 and 1821. He designed various urban improvements for London, and painted some landscapes of the Thames Valley. He became paralysed in 1853 and died in Douglas, Isle of Man. Martin is best-known as a painter of religious subjects and fantastic compositions. His paintings, typically vast landscapes and cityscapes peopled with a myriad of tiny figures, enjoyed great success, as did the engravings made from them. The engravings of The Deluge (1837) and two others were presented by the French Academy to Louis Phillippe who ordered a special medal to be struck and sent to Martin as a token of esteem. After the Belgian government bought The Fall of Ninevah, the Belgian Academy made Martin a member and the King of Belgium created him a Knight of the Order of Leopold.