Training, travel and the art of exhibition
Born at Port Adelaide in 1855, Menpes studied art before settling in London in 1875. Further training and work with James McNeill Whistler developed his printmaking. Japanese art became an important influence. His 1887 visit to Japan led to a London exhibition the following year in which the pictures, frames, wall colour and arrangement formed a carefully designed setting.
The friendship with Whistler broke down amid disputes that included Menpes’s Japanese-style house. His later career combined extensive travel, portraiture and publishing. In 1900 he worked as a war artist in South Africa; subsequent illustrated books drew on journeys through Asia and elsewhere. He also became involved in printing through the Menpes Press. He died in 1938. His career joined making pictures to finding ways of exhibiting and reproducing them.
A painter’s impressions and a daughter’s recollections
Japan, a Record in Colour names Menpes as artist and Dorothy Menpes as transcriber. Her note, dated November 1901, explains that her father’s impressions mingle with her own memories of childhood travel. The book consequently offers more than one perspective on its selected scenes.
Actors, streets, gardens and workshops appear in the illustration list. In the inspected figure pictures, a robe, face or flowering branch concentrates attention while surrounding areas remain loosely described. The early discussion of theatre likewise values a composed whole. Colour, interval and emphasis guide the eye without describing every surface equally. The book’s generalisations belong to these visiting observers; the pictures and prose offer a shaped encounter with Japan rather than a comprehensive account of its people.
