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| Jimmy Whistler |
If he were alive today , the renowned American artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler would be delighted to think that he would be receiving payment and much attention from the National Gallery of Victoria exhibition of his famous painting of his mother, instead of his pesky friend , the Adelaide born artist Mortimer Menpes , whom he once described in a moment of pique as a marsupial who raked in lots of money into his pouch with his paws.
Whistler and Menpes met in 1880 when Mortimer was on a sketching tour of Brittany ; they became close friends and shared a flat on the Chelsea Embankment, London . Whistler , a dashing , pugnacious, argumentative individual, taught Menpes etching and became godfather to his daughter .
The Australian achieved fame, popularity and fortune as a painter, etcher and book publisher , one volume with the title Whistler As I Knew Him. Menpes covered the Boer War , travelled to India , Japan and Russia , held one man exhibitions , his presentation of the Japanese way of life extremely popular in London high society . He imported a large team of Asian artisans to convert his house at Cadogan Gardens into a dazzling Japanese style dwelling , described as the most exciting home in London . In 1888 , Whistler and Menpes quarrelled over the design , Whistler claiming it was a brazen copy of his own ideas.
The Japanese influence on his art is highlighted in this 2014 catalogue cover of The World of Mortimer Menpes -Painter, Etcher, Raconteur- exhibition at the South Australian Art Gallery. In 1911 Menpes presented Australia with 38 copies of the world's old masters , now in the National Library of Australia, to boost the interest in art in his homeland .
The Australian achieved fame, popularity and fortune as a painter, etcher and book publisher , one volume with the title Whistler As I Knew Him. Menpes covered the Boer War , travelled to India , Japan and Russia , held one man exhibitions , his presentation of the Japanese way of life extremely popular in London high society . He imported a large team of Asian artisans to convert his house at Cadogan Gardens into a dazzling Japanese style dwelling , described as the most exciting home in London . In 1888 , Whistler and Menpes quarrelled over the design , Whistler claiming it was a brazen copy of his own ideas.
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Menpes inside the fabulous Japanese style house which upset Whistler .
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This writer first became aware of Menpes (1855-1938) after attending a deceased estate auction in Adelaide at which was bought the scrapbook, postcards and some books which had belonged to a Northern Territory Mounted Policeman ,Tom Turner , and his wife , Pauline "Alma" Rohde, a South Australian nurse who at the age of 31 joined up as an army nurse during WWl and sailed aboard SS Canberra for Bombay , India . She had changed her name to Rhodes , possibly due to the fact that her maiden name sounded Germanic .
A book she bought about India, illustrated by Menpes, sent to her father with a brief note , was in the auction . After working in a military hospital in India, she transferred to escort duty in the Persian Gulf and off Marseilles . One of her apparent souvenirs was a piece of trench art in the shape of a biplane made out of bullets . During the war and after , she and Tom kept in contact by correspondence ; and after 19 years finally married .
Strange to say, Whistler is listed in the Macquarie Pocket Dictionary, but not Menpes .The painting of Whistler's Mother on loan from the Musee d'Orsay , Paris.The photograph of Whistler run here shows him hamming it up holding a top hat, with a rolled down cloak and what appears to be a long staff for walking It is from a 1930s French art magazine , Verve, popular with Melbourne's Heidi group which had a big impact on the nation's cultural growth. Our copy of the magazine includes a Whistler painting of Venice .
