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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Art Emporium
• Sale Date:
  26 Jul 2015 ~ 2pm
• Lot #:
  25
• Lot Description:
  Mortimer L. Menpes
  (1860-1938)
  Light and Shade circa 1901
  oil and black chalk on board
  32 x 40 cm
  signed lower left: Mortimer Menpes
• Exhibited:
  The World of Mortimer Menpes: painter, etcher, raconteur, Art Gallery of South Australia, 14 June - 7 September 2014
• References:
  Mortimer Menpes, World's Children, Adams and Charles Black, London, 1903, pl. no. 45; Gary Morgan, Etched Works of Mortimer Menpes 1855-1938 Vol. 1, Stuart Galleries, Crafers West, 2012, p.137; Julie Robinson, The World of Mortimer Menpes: painter, etcher, raconteur, Thames & Hudson, London, 2014
• Notes:
  Mortimer Menpes' refined painting Light and Shade almost prefigures an important aspect of early English Modernism. Menpes was an extremely gifted Adelaide-born artist who went on to study at the local School of Design and whose enviable skills were honed at the School of Art in London in 1878 after his family returned to England. His highly accomplished paintings were shown at London's Royal Academy in Piccadilly and such was his artistic success that he exhibited there for the next twenty years. Subsequently, he befriended James McNeil Whistler and the two worked and travelled together, as well as sharing a flat in Chelsea. Menpes was South Australia's first artist to have resounding international success. There is little doubt that Whistler's subtle influence may be discerned in the background of Menpes' Light and Shade - even the painting's title hints at an admiration of Whistler's use of softly toned atmospheric effects. One can see that Menpes thought carefully about the visual effects of the entire composition of the painting, in that it reveals a reduced tonal range and a restricted use of colour. The background is arranged almost like an abstracted composition with flat plane pictorial features that show painterly effects, visual texture and scumbled surfaces. A usage that runs counter to Menpes' more usual and earlier naturalistic manner. This more usual approach is seen on the right hand side of the painting. Its figure is much more realistically rendered, especially in its facial features and in the definition of the overlapping hands of the young girl in the foreground. Looked at in these aesthetically operative ways the present painting is an optically balanced study in spatial and colouristic harmonies, more cautious than Whistler but deftly harmonious nonetheless. There is too, in this painting, visual evidence of the discerning use of a subtle Japanese refinement and understatement. The informal beauty of everyday things, of worn surfaces, the asymmetrical proportions and the modest subject matter, all of them no doubt absorbed during his travel to Japan in 1887, then newly opened to the West. One senses in this evocative and visually pleasing painting the lingering appeal of a lost Age. Mortimer Menpes artistic vision did not look back to the past for inspiration like his classmate Sir Edward Poynter or like Lord Frederic Leighton, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, John Waterhouse and the Pre-Raphaelites. By contrast, Menpes saw himself and his forward-looking paintings as decidedly modern. The artist read widely, travelled relentlessly and remained open to new ideas about culture, especially the culture of exotic places and foreign lands. Menpes was the late Empire artist par excellence with an important exhibition of his works entitled The World of Mortimer Menpes: Painter, Etcher, Raconteur was held at the Art Gallery of South Australia from 14 June to 7 September 2014. It revealed him as one of the greatest forgotten Australian talents.
• Estimate:
  A$12,000 - 18,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.