Mortimer Menpes

1855 Port Adelaide – 1938 Pangbourne

From 1875 the Australian painter, printmaker and book illustrator, Mortimer Menpes, studied under Alphonse Legros and others at the National Art Training School in South Kensington, London. As a member of the Society of Painter-Etchers he participated regularly in its annual exhibitions and made a name for himself as a talented portraitist. While in Brittany (1881–83) he met James McNeill Whistler, who was to exert a decisive artistic influence on him. Menpes undertook journeys inter alia to Japan, India, Italy, Morocco and Mexico and subsequently staged innovatively designed exhibitions in London that contributed to the spread of Japanism. In the 1890s he experimented with coloured prints. The Japanese-inspired design of the studio he opened in Chelsea in 1899 attracted art enthusiasts and buyers alike. From 1900 he ran a commercial printing house. A highly prolific artist, he had his last major individual exhibition in 1913, but went on to produce hundreds of other works up to his death.