Juan Martínez Abades (7 March 1862 – 19 January 1920) was a Spanish painter in the Naturalist style, who specialized in seascapes and other maritime scenes from the Cornisa Cantábrica.

[1] On that basis, he received a travel stipend from the Diputación de Oviedo that enabled him to visit Italy and study at the Accademia di San Luca.

With the support of Florencio Valdés (1836-1910, industrialist and co-founder of the newspaper El Comercio) he was able to establish himself in Madrid.

His marriage to a woman from the Canary Islands in 1891 led to work decorating the City Hall in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and his maritime paintings came to be very eclectic, encompassing costumbrista-style scenes, ships new and historical, shorebirds and geological formations.

The decline in popularity for these types of paintings after the turn of the century led him to concentrate more on his song writing career although, from 1912 to 1914, he designed a series of calendars that were used by the Spanish Navy.