Marie Breton Peasant

Mortimer Luddington Menpes

Australian born Mortimer Luddington Menpes studied with James A.M. Whistler in 1880-81 and assisted Whistler with printing his etchings.

This intaglio is a portrait done by Menpes based on a painting he did titled "Old Woman", illustrated in Mortimer and Dorothy Menpes' book "Brittany", published by Adam & Charles Black in 1905.

M.H. Spielmann commented on Menpes portraiture in 'The Magazine of Art' in 1899: "He has turned portraiture as the severest schooling through which a man can pass - for he, obviously, cannot agree with the foolish tenet of certain lights among his associates of his early days (Whistler?), that the features in a portrait are merely 'an accident..."

Michael L. Galfer in the Atlas Galleries catalogue on Menpes' prints notes on page 9: "Edition sizes are seldom recorded and vary with subject and technique...some of his earlier drypoint portraits are numbered from editions of 25, and the later Venetian views are from editions of 70. It is also thought that many of his prints were not printed to a compete edition, the number of impressions pulled being determined by the wear of the plate and the demand for the works."