Mortimer Luddington Menpes

Born: 1855

Death: 1938

Biography:

Mortimer Luddington Menpes in 1881, Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) in 1885, Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI) in 1897 and Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI) in 1899.
An exhibition of his work, The World of Mortimer Menpes: Painter, Etcher, Raconteur opened at the Art Gallery of South Australia on 14 June 2014.
Menpes, his parents and three of his siblings left for England in February 1875, never to return to Australia. However five of Menpes' sisters remained in South Australia. Four daughters married in Adelaide: Mary Ann (1839–1929), born aboard the Moffatt and married John Foach Hillier in 1865; Fanny married Robert Uphill in 1865; and Matilda (born 1850) in 1873 married the Rev. J(ohn) Hall Angas, a Presbyterian minister of Port Adelaide, later in Victoria. His fifth daughter Jessie (born 1853) married Robert Whitbread, of Blinman, in 1876. James Henry (born 1844), Emma (born 1857) and Louisa (born 1859) left with Mortimer and their parents for England in 1875.
On 26 April 1875 at All Soul's Church, Langham Place, London, Menpes married fellow Australian Rosa Mary Grosse (1857 – 23 August 1936). Miss Grosse was a fellow-passenger on the RMSS Nubia that took the Menpes family to London in 1875. She was an orphan: her mother Rosetta Matilda Grosse died in 1866 and her father James Grosse, a fellow member with James Menpes of the Port Adelaide Corporation and whose Will was executed by Menpes, in 1874.They had a son, Mortimer James (b. 1879) and two daughters, Rose Maud Goodwin and Dorothy Whistler.
Menpes painted in oil and watercolour as well as being a prolific printmaker, producing over 700 etchings and drypoints during his career to great acclaim. A definitive catalog raisonne of his printed works was published in 2012 which also included an extensive biography and his exhibition history.

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