The first owner, Benjamin Hick of Bolton, who had purchased the painting directly from the artist, was a famous Victorian engineer who founded the company of Hicks Hargreaves, makers of Steam Engines. The Celestial City was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1841 with the following lines from Milton’s Paradise Lost Book 3, line 374: Thee, Author of all being, Fountain of Light, thyself invisible. The same subject, under the title Heaven - The Rivers of Bliss, was engraved in Martin’s Paradise Lost of Milton, 1825-7, but the design of the latter is closer in composition to his oil painting The Plains of Heaven of 1853. John Martin designed a frame with a dove motif for the painting, but it was never made.
Provenance: - Benjamin Hick of Bolton, purchased from John Martin; his sale, Manchester, February 1843 to: - George Whiteley - Captain Sir Maurice Huntington-Whitely - Sir H. B. Huntingdon-Whitely to 1994 - Peter Nahum At The Leicester Galleries - FORBES Magazine Collection
Exhibited: - London, Royal Academy, 1841, number 428 - Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, 1952 (on loan) - London, Victoria and Albert, Berlioz and the Romantic Imagination, 1969, number 219 reproduced in catalogue - London, Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, John Martin, Loan Exhibition, 1975
Literature: - Mary L Pendered, John Martin, Painter, 1923, pages 145, 158 and 280 - Thomas Balston, John Martin 1789-1854, His Life and Works, Duckworth, London 1947, pages 206 & 275 - Richard James, Two Paintings by John Martin, Burlington Magazine, volume XCIV number 593 August 1952, pages 234-237 and plate 23 - William Feaver, John Martin, London 1975, pages 165-167, 169, 173, 198, 231 number 38, 232 number 46 and plate 125