GOING TO BED – ENGLAND
MORTIMER MENPES
oil on board
40.5 x 31.5 cm
signed lower left: Mortimer Menpes
bears inscription verso: 186 / Going to Bed / World's Children / No 6 / England
Private collection, UK
Lawrences Auctioneers, Somerset, 18 January 2019, lot 1943
Private collection, Sydney
Menpes, M., & Menpes, D., World's Children, A. & C. Black, London, 1903, pl. 6 (illus.)
This work will be accompanied by
MORTIMER MENPES
(1855 – 1938)
GOING TO BED (ENGLAND), c.1889
etching in colours
11.0 x 8.0 cm
edition: unknown (no other recorded copies)
signed lower right below image (faded)
bears inscription on label attached verso: “Study of a Child”
PROVENANCE
Kenulf Gallery, Gloucestershire, UK (label attached verso)
Mallams, Oxford, UK, 26 February 2020, lot 81
Private collection, Sydney
LITERATURE
This work will be included in a forthcoming Supplement to Morgan, G., The Etched Works of Mortimer Menpes (1855 - 1938), Stuart Galleries, Adelaide, 2012
According to Gary Morgan, author of the catalogue raisonné The Etched Works of Mortimer Menpes, this painting and etching likely depicts one of the artist's children, possibly Dorothy Whistler Menpes (born 1883).1 Dorothy co-authored several illustrated books with her father, including World's Children, 1903, in which the painting Going to bed – England is illustrated. Menpes was a devoted follower of American artist James McNeill Whistler, and despite a dramatic falling out in 1888, Menpes remained an admirer.
Having attended Whistler's funeral in 1903, Menpes wrote the memoir, Whistler as I Knew Him, published in 1904.2 Dedicated to Dorothy, the frontispiece of the limited edition (of 500) of Whistler as I Knew Him, was an etching by Whister, The Menpes Children, which Whistler originally produced in 1887.3 Dorothy, who was four at the time, would have been one of the children featured in the etching. The frontispiece of the other editions of Whistler as I Knew Him featured a portrait of Whistler painted by Menpes.
1. Correspondence with Gary Morgan, 23 March 2020
2. Menpes, M., Whistler as I Knew Him, A. and C. Black, London, 1904
3. James McNeill Whistler, The Menpes Children, 1887, etching, in Kennedy, E. G., The Etched Work of Whistler, New York, 1910, cat. 261