Japanese street scene

Mortimer Menpes was South Australia’s first internationally recognised artist. He travelled to London in 1875, aged twenty, where he established a successful career as a travel artist and portraitist. From 1883 to 1887 he was a ‘pupil’ and close associate of James McNeill Whistler and through him became attuned to the growing popularity in London of Japanese art and objects.

In 1887 Menpes travelled to Japan to experience the country at first hand and the following year held an exhibition of his Japanese paintings and drypoints in London. The exhibition caused a sensation and sold out almost immediately. His
tiny paintings were displayed in flat gold frames designed by Menpes and were asymmetrically arranged on pinkish-purple walls under a velarium ceiling – 
the intention was to create a total  aesthetic experience.

News of Menpes’s success filtered back to his hometown of Adelaide and in August 1889 two paintings from his London exhibition were lent to Adelaide’s National Gallery by a private collector, the Honourable David Murray, MLC – one being Japanese street scene. This painting, which depicts the entrance to a shop, reveals Menpes’s fascination with Japanese people and their vibrant life on the streets. He was particularly delighted by the colour and placement of elements of the streetscape, such as the diagonal banner and the rows of pink lanterns. In 2014, after an absence of 125 years, this painting again returned to the Art Gallery of South Australia and was purchased for the collection.

Julie Robinson, Senior Curator Prints, Drawings and Photographs