Mortimer L. Menpes (1855-1938) Watercolor "breton Woman And Her Child - Auray" Brittany

Watercolour, signed top right. Dimensions 22x15cm on view 42x35 with its frame. Mortimer Menpes, is an important and recognized British artist, member of the Royal Academies and is exhibited in many museums around the world. The work we present is part of watercolours made in Brittany, and published in the books "Brittany" and "Children of the World" in 1903 and 1905. The artist represented a "mother and her child" on a neutral background which highlights his subject p180 in the Auray chapter. Mortimer Luddington Menpes began his artistic training at the School of Art in London in 1878 and exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy in 1880. He exhibited his paintings and prints there regularly for the next 20 years. Menpes first visited Brittany in 1880, notably at Pont Aven where he met James Whistler with whom he became friends. They shared a flat in London on their return and Whistler guided Menpes' early engraving and introduced him to Japonism. Menpes became a major figure in the revival of printmaking in England, producing many drypoints and etchings. He developed a new technique for reproducing his watercolours in colour using photography, which was used in works that the painter, a great traveller, published in the early 1900s with the collaboration of his daughter Dorothy (Whistler's goddaughter). His works on India and Japan, China, the children of the world were very successful, as was the one on Brittany.