Adelaide-born Mortimer Menpes was an important Australian expatriate artist who worked in Britain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is most renowned as a close associate of Whistler from 1880 until 1888, a time when he was influenced by Whistler's Japanese-inspired aestheticism and acknowledged Whistler as his 'master'. However, Menpes's most prolific and successful period as an artist, post-dates his Whistlerian years. From the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s Menpes's paintings and etchings, inspired by his first-hand experience of visiting Japan (and other 'exotic' locations) were enthusiastically received by a London audience eagerly embracing Japonisme. Menpes also achieved acclaim as a portraitist, with leading actors, artists, politicians and society figures flocking to his famous Japanese-inspired house to have their portraits painted or etched. This publication is the first to consider Menpes' whole oeuvre and contribution to British art. It presents new scholarship from leading Menpes' scholars from around the world and illustrates key works from public and private collections in Britain, the United States and Australia together for the first time.

Japan held a profound fascination for western artists in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the influence of Japonisme on western art was pervasive. Paradoxically, just as western artists were beginning to find inspiration in Japan and Japanese art, Japan was opening to the western world and beginning a process of thorough modernisation, some have said westernisation. The mastery of western art was included in the programme. This book examines the nineteenth century art world against this background and explores Japanese influences on four artists working in Britain in particular: the American James McNeill Whistler, the Australian Mortimer Menpes, and the 'Glasgow boys' George Henry and Edward Atkinson Hornel. Japonisme in Britian is richly illustrated throughout.

A weekly review of politics, literature, theology, and art.

This anonymous manuscript play has long been the subject of scholarly dispute regarding its relationship with Shakespeare's Richard II. This edition, which thoroughly re-examines the text, situates the play within its historical and political context, relating it to the genre of chronicle drama to which it belongs. The manuscript is of particular interest in that it appears to have been used in the playhouse over a considerable period of time and contains what seems to be evidence of the theatre practice of the time. The play is also of special interest for its skilful and original handling of source material which may well have influenced Shakespeare's Richard II. The extensive appendices drawn from Holinshed, Grafton and Stow provide the reader with the opportunity to investigate the manner in which the dramatist has shaped the material. The editors argue for the play's stage-worthiness and dramatic complexity, suggesting that its range both of dramatic tone and social inclusiveness indicate the work of a dramatist of considerable skill and subtlety, equal or superior to the Shakespeare of the Henry VI plays.