DOI Heft:
No. 33 (December, 1895)
DOI Artikel:Mr. Mortimer Menpes and his mexican memories
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17295#0176
Mortimer Menpes Mexican Memories
to find Mr. Mortimer Menpes with the atmosphere
of the sun-lands still around him. Of itself Mexico
is an interesting subject; one doubts if any country
still preserves more mystery than that half-Indian,
half-Spanish land, unfamiliar to globe-trotters as a
rule, or at least to English tourists. But no spot
on the globe seems unfamiliar to Mr. Menpes, who
has a knack of vanishing silently and reappearing
unexpectedly, bringing new sheaves of paintings with
him. Nor has he the infelicitous knack so often
possessed by topographical artists, of making all
places look pretty much the same. Of late years
each new sketching-ground has inspired a new
method to depict it, although it must be owned that
for several exhibitions he has shown a consistent
advance in the same direction. For, as readers
of The Studio need not be told again, Mr.
Menpes is now, and
has been of late, bent
on securing extreme
brilliancy of colour
combined with high
finish; not, it must be
confessed, to the de-
triment of any other
qualities of his work,
which are all the same
subordinated to this
aim, whatever be their
theme or sentiment.
Naturally, being a
skilled craftsman, he
only selects those sub-
jects which permit
gorgeous colouring to
be lavished upon them,
and ransacks the globe
to this end. Nor could his most intimate enemy
(if he has one) deny that he accomplishes his
purpose. Painted upon smooth panels, with
specially sparkling pigments varnished to the high
lustre of fine enamel and set in black frames,
one doubts whether even a Monticelli or the
most luminous Rossetti would not look thin and
pale beside his later work. Indeed, only a
stained-glass window could be reasonably entered
as a rival. As you look at his pictures hung to-
gether on the walls, themselves their only parallel,
their high key may not strike you so forcibly ; but
seen one at a time in a room hung with pictures of
past days as brilliantly lustrous as any works could
well be, the defiant note of Mr. Menpes' Mexican
pictures throws the rest into the background. It
is like the tuba of a great organ suddenly giving
162
forth a melody amid a harmony on the diapason ;
or, to vary the simile, like a Wagner Leit-motif'for
trombones bursting through a sustained passage
for strings and wood-wind.
" Surely these could not have been painted on
the spot," I said, as Mr. Menpes showed me several
pictures with strong contrasts of artificial light on
the figures of the foreground, and luminous tropical
skies, whose lustre at night is like lapis-lazuli,
seen beneath arches, or through windows at the
back.
"No," he replied; "it would have been abso-
lutely impossible in those crowded market-places
in the key these are worked, where every touch
is put on finally upon a brilliant ground, without
dragging the colours over each other. What I
claim for them is that they are compositions
true to the subject all
the same, although built
up from rapid, genuine
impressions. Small
notes and studies of
figures, in colour and
in black and white,
were all that I could
secure directly from
the models. In this
way I made innumer-
able sketches, and then
while the originals were
still vivid in my me-
mory, I arranged the
groups as I required
them, and painted the
picture I had seen,
modified only so far
as pictorial require-
ments made it advisable to depart from the actual
scene.
" Did I leave the beaten track to find them ?
Yes, for the most part. The show places were in-
teresting enough in their own way, but they did
not attract me, as did some of the less known
towns. Many of these were done at Teheuantepec,
the headquarters of the Zapateco race, a people
who have always preserved their independence in
spite of Aztecs and Spaniards. The last purchased
their country, it is true, but never conquered it.
They are a very fine race. Possibly from genera-
tions of ancestors used to bearing heavy burdens,
the women have acquired a peculiarly graceful,
supple carriage. They are a handsome people,
even more cleanly than the Japanese. They wash
and bathe two or three times a day, and delight in
"ZAPATECO WOMEN
FROM A SKETCH BY MORTIMER MENPES
to find Mr. Mortimer Menpes with the atmosphere
of the sun-lands still around him. Of itself Mexico
is an interesting subject; one doubts if any country
still preserves more mystery than that half-Indian,
half-Spanish land, unfamiliar to globe-trotters as a
rule, or at least to English tourists. But no spot
on the globe seems unfamiliar to Mr. Menpes, who
has a knack of vanishing silently and reappearing
unexpectedly, bringing new sheaves of paintings with
him. Nor has he the infelicitous knack so often
possessed by topographical artists, of making all
places look pretty much the same. Of late years
each new sketching-ground has inspired a new
method to depict it, although it must be owned that
for several exhibitions he has shown a consistent
advance in the same direction. For, as readers
of The Studio need not be told again, Mr.
Menpes is now, and
has been of late, bent
on securing extreme
brilliancy of colour
combined with high
finish; not, it must be
confessed, to the de-
triment of any other
qualities of his work,
which are all the same
subordinated to this
aim, whatever be their
theme or sentiment.
Naturally, being a
skilled craftsman, he
only selects those sub-
jects which permit
gorgeous colouring to
be lavished upon them,
and ransacks the globe
to this end. Nor could his most intimate enemy
(if he has one) deny that he accomplishes his
purpose. Painted upon smooth panels, with
specially sparkling pigments varnished to the high
lustre of fine enamel and set in black frames,
one doubts whether even a Monticelli or the
most luminous Rossetti would not look thin and
pale beside his later work. Indeed, only a
stained-glass window could be reasonably entered
as a rival. As you look at his pictures hung to-
gether on the walls, themselves their only parallel,
their high key may not strike you so forcibly ; but
seen one at a time in a room hung with pictures of
past days as brilliantly lustrous as any works could
well be, the defiant note of Mr. Menpes' Mexican
pictures throws the rest into the background. It
is like the tuba of a great organ suddenly giving
162
forth a melody amid a harmony on the diapason ;
or, to vary the simile, like a Wagner Leit-motif'for
trombones bursting through a sustained passage
for strings and wood-wind.
" Surely these could not have been painted on
the spot," I said, as Mr. Menpes showed me several
pictures with strong contrasts of artificial light on
the figures of the foreground, and luminous tropical
skies, whose lustre at night is like lapis-lazuli,
seen beneath arches, or through windows at the
back.
"No," he replied; "it would have been abso-
lutely impossible in those crowded market-places
in the key these are worked, where every touch
is put on finally upon a brilliant ground, without
dragging the colours over each other. What I
claim for them is that they are compositions
true to the subject all
the same, although built
up from rapid, genuine
impressions. Small
notes and studies of
figures, in colour and
in black and white,
were all that I could
secure directly from
the models. In this
way I made innumer-
able sketches, and then
while the originals were
still vivid in my me-
mory, I arranged the
groups as I required
them, and painted the
picture I had seen,
modified only so far
as pictorial require-
ments made it advisable to depart from the actual
scene.
" Did I leave the beaten track to find them ?
Yes, for the most part. The show places were in-
teresting enough in their own way, but they did
not attract me, as did some of the less known
towns. Many of these were done at Teheuantepec,
the headquarters of the Zapateco race, a people
who have always preserved their independence in
spite of Aztecs and Spaniards. The last purchased
their country, it is true, but never conquered it.
They are a very fine race. Possibly from genera-
tions of ancestors used to bearing heavy burdens,
the women have acquired a peculiarly graceful,
supple carriage. They are a handsome people,
even more cleanly than the Japanese. They wash
and bathe two or three times a day, and delight in
"ZAPATECO WOMEN
FROM A SKETCH BY MORTIMER MENPES