Hell’s Gates (the title is taken from the text at the top of the picture, ‘Hells Gates is opin wide’) is Jonathan Martin’s own highly idiosyncratic version of William Hogarth’s painting Satan, Sin and Death (now in the Tate Gallery), which he probably knew from an engraving. John Martin also illustrated this scene from Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which Sin intervenes to prevent a combat between Satan and Death, at the gates of Hell. Jonathan’s version is, however, visually closer to Hogarth’s than to his brother’s. Much of the Hogarth original is still to be found in Hell’s Gates, but the substitution of a bishop with ten horns and the word ‘Blasphemy’ written across his head, for the figure of Sin, has introduced an element of pictorial incoherence. Martin’s obsession with bishops as the cause of all evil actually makes narrative sense of this substitution. In Milton, Satan is the father of both Sin and Death: Martin’s bishop thus becomes a son of the devil. His (relative) fidelity to Hogarth has, however, left Sin’s scaly serpent’s tail disembodied at the bottom of the picture, where, as in the original, it is being snarled over and mauled by a pack of Hell-hounds. Other personal additions include three fire-spitting snakes, and his trade-mark lion. The text is also his own embellishment. To Armes, to armes the Lion rors, the Sarpents points their Deathly Darts. Fight on your time is short the Lion rors we shall be bound a thoughsand years, one passage reads: and another, The Deval Has nokt the Bishops Mitor of. (Martin’s spelling deteriorated badly when he became excited.)
Acquired in 1996 with assistance from the MGC/V&A Purchase Grant Fund.