Martin Richard Fletcher Butlin CBE FBA (born 7 June 1929) is a British art historian, an authority on historic British art and in particular Turner and William Blake.
Butlin was educated at Rendcomb College, Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Courtauld Institute. He was Assistant Keeper 1955–67 and Keeper of the Historic British Collection at the Tate Gallery 1967–89. He was a consultant to Christie's in London from 1989.
Butlin was appointed CBE in the 1990 New Year Honours.
William Blake (1757-1827): A Catalogue of the Works of William Blake in the Tate Gallery, 1957, 2nd edition 1971, 3rd edition 1990
Samuel Palmer’s Sketchbook of 1824, 1962; 2nd edition Samuel Palmer: the sketchbook of 1824, 2005
Turner Watercolours, Barrie & Jenkins, 1962. ISBN 0214157997
Turner (with Sir John Rothenstein), Heinemann, 1964
The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture (with Mary Chamot and Dennis Farr), Tate Gallery Catalogue, 1964
The Later Works of J. M. W. Turner, Tate Gallery little book series, 1965
William Blake, Tate Gallery little book series, 1966
The Blake-Varley Sketchbook of 1819 in the collection of M.D.E. Clayton-Stamm, Heinemann, 1969
The Paintings of J. M. W. Turner (with Evelyn Joll), 1977, 2nd edition 1984 (authors jointly awarded the Mitchell Prize for the History of Art, 1978)
William Blake, Tate Gallery, 1978. ISBN 0905005112
The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, Yale University Press, 1981. ISBN 0300025505
Aspects of British Painting 1550–1800, from the Collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation (exhibition catalogue), 1988
Turner at Petworth: Painter and Patron (with Mollie Luther and Ian Warrell), Tate Gallery, 1989
William Blake in the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria (with Ted Gott and Irena Zdanowicz), 1989
The Oxford Companion to J. M. W. Turner (ed. with Evelyn Joll and Luke Herrmann), 2001
William Blake's Watercolour Inventions in illustration of "The Grave" by Robert Blair (with Morton D. Paley), 2009
