1789 Born in Haydon Bridge, Northumberland.
1803 Apprenticed to a coachmaker in Newcastle upon Tyne.
1804 Martin receives tuition from a Piedmontese painter by the name of Boniface Musso.
1805 Settles in London.
1809 Employed in the glass painting studio of William Collins but works on oil paintings in his spare time.
1810 His first submission to the Royal Academy is rejected.
1812 Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion is a success when exhibited at the Royal Academy. The picture is sold and this marks the start of his career.
1821 50,000 people pay to see his painting Belshazzar’s Feast which is exhibited at the British Institution.
1830’s Martin devotes himself to printmaking but his copyright is constantly infringed by imitators, bringing him to financial disaster.
1851-3 Paints the three huge Last Judgement paintings.
1854 Dies in Douglas, Isle of Man.
1817 The Bard, New Haven, Yale Center for British Art
c1821 The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, London, Tate
1823 The Seventh Plague, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts
1837 Manfred and the Alpine Witch, Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery
1839 The Coronation of Queen Victoria, London, Tate
1852 The Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah, Newcastle upon Tyne, Laing Art Gallery
1853 The Great Day of his Wrath, London, Tate
1853 The Plains of Heaven, London, Tate
1853 The Last Judgement, London, Tate