British Painter, 1855-1939 was a war artist and engraver, author, printmaker and illustrator. Menpes was born at Port Adelaide on 22 February 1855, the second son of property developer James Menpes, who with his wife, Ann, had settled in Australia in 1839. Educated at a private school, he attended classes at the Adelaide school of design, but his formal art training began at the South Kensington School of Art in 1878, after his family had moved back to England in 1875. Edward Poynter was a fellow student at the school. Menpes first exhibited at a Royal Academy exhibition in 1880. Over the following 20 years 35 of his paintings and etchings appeared at the Academy. He set off on a sketching tour of Brittany in 1880 and thereby met James McNeill Whistler, becoming his pupil and at one stage sharing a flat with him at Cheyne Walk on the Embankment in London. Here he was taught etching by Whistler, whose influence, together with that of Japanese design, is evident in his later work. His 1887 trip to Japan led to his first one-man exhibition at Dowdeswell's Gallery (1878-1912) in London. Menpes bought a property at 25 Cadogan Gardens in Sloane Square in 1888 and decorated it in the Japanese style. Whistler and Menpes quarreled in 1888 over the interior design of the house, which Whistler felt was a brazen copying of his own ideas. The house was sold in 1900, and Menpes retired to Kent. In 1900, after the outbreak of the Boer War, Menpes was sent to South Africa as a war artist for the weekly Black and White. With the war's end in 1902 he travelled widely, visiting Burma, Egypt, France, India, Italy, Japan, Kashmir, Mexico, Morocco, and Spain and producing illustrated books of those countries. His book on the Delhi Darbar of illustrated Curzon's grand spectacle of 1903. He married Rosa Mary Grosse in London in 1875. She too, was from Australia and died 23 August 1936. They produced a son, Mortimer James (b. 1879) and two daughters, Rose Maud Goodwin and Dorothy Whistler. Dorothy, Whistler's godchild, married a Mr. Flower and died in Minehead in July 1973 aged 89.  Related Paintings of Mortimer Menpes :. | Baptism,renunciation of marriage,appointment as bishop (mk36) | polyptych of saint augustine | Outside a Restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne. Study | Der Lebensweg eines Wustlings | hamnen i marseille |
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thomas malton
Thomas Malton (1748 - 7 March 1804), the younger, was an English painter of topographical and architectural views, and an engraver. J M W Turner and Thomas Girtin were amongst his pupils. He is designated the younger to differentiate him from his father Thomas Malton the elder. Malton was born in London, the son of Thomas Malton the elder, a notable architectural draughtsman and writer on geometry. He was with his father during the latter's residence in Dublin, Ireland, and then passed three years in the office of James Gandon the architect, in London. In 1774 Malton received a premium from the Society of Arts. He entered the Royal Academy and in 1782 gained a gold medal for his design for a theatre. In 1773 he sent the Academy a view of Covent Garden, and was afterwards a constant exhibitor, chiefly of views of London streets and buildings, drawn in Indian ink and tinted. In these there is little attempt at pictorial effect, but their extreme accuracy in the architectural details renders them of great interest and value as topographical records. They are enlivened with groups of figures, in which Malton is said to have been assisted by Francis Wheatley. After leaving Ireland, Malton appears to have always lived in London - with the exception of a brief stay at Bath in 1780. From 1783 to 1789 he resided in Conduit Street (London), and at an evening drawing class which he held there, received as pupils Thomas Girtin and young J M W Turner, whose father brought him to be taught perspective. Turner paid tribute to him in later life by saying My real master was Tom Malton. In 1791 Malton removed to Great Titchfield Street, and finally, in 1796, to Long Acre. He made a few of the drawings for Watts's Seats of the Nobility and Gentry published in 1779, and executed some large aquatints of buildings in both London and Bath, being one of the first to avail himself of the newly introduced art of aquatinta for the purpose of multiplying copies of his views. He also painted some scenes for Covent Garden Theatre. In 1792 Malton published the work by which he is now best known, A Picturesque Tour through the Cities of London and Westminster, illustrated with a hundred aquatint plates. Between 1798 -1800 he produced Views from Cambridge, and at the time of his death was engaged upon a similar series of views of Oxford, some of which appeared in parts in 1802, and were reissued with others in 1810. Malton died in Long Acre, London on 7 March 1804, leaving a widow and six children. His portrait, painted by Gilbert Stuart, was engraved by William Barney in 1806. A portrait of his son Charles, when a child, drawn by Sir Thomas Lawrence, was engraved by F C Lewis. Malton's brother James Malton was also a notable artist, draughtsman and engraver.
Agnes Goodsir
(18 June 1864, Portland, Victoria - 1939, France) was an Australian portrait painter who moved within lesbian circles in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Goodsir was one of eleven children born to David James Cook Goodsir, Commissioner of Customs at Melbourne, and Elizabeth Archer. Her early art training started with Arthur T. Woodward at the Bendigo School of Mines in the 1890s, and in 1899 some of her work was raffled in Bendigo to partly finance her study in Paris. The years following World War I saw a virtual exodus of Australian artists on a sort of Grand Tour to Paris, all intent on being part of the explosion of the arts taking place there. Painters like Rupert Bunny, Stella Bowen and Max Meldrum were drawn there by the appeal of the Left Bank. Others like Margaret Preston and Grace Crowley were inspired to develop in new directions by post-war Parisian art. Goodsir attended the Academie Delecluse, the Academie Julian and then the Academie Colarossi. From about 1912 she shuttled between London and Paris, but finally settled in Paris at 18 Rue de l'Odeon. Her constant companion was Rachel Dunn, depicted in several of her paintings, such as The Chinese Skirt 1933, Girl with Cigarette 1925, The Letter 1926 and Morning Tea 1925. Her work was acclaimed and exhibited at the New Salon, the Salon des Independants, and the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris as well as at the Royal Academy and the Royal Institute in London. On a short visit to Australia in 1927 she exhibited at the Macquarie Galleries in Sydney and the Fine Arts Gallery in Melbourne. In 1938 four of her oils were shown at the sesquicentennial exhibition at the NSW National Art Gallery. On her death in 1939, her paintings were left to her companion Rachel Dunn, who sent some 40 to Agnes's family in Australia and others to Australian galleries.