ABSTRACT
Mortimer Menpes (1856-1938),1 born ‘inartistically’ as he said, in Australia, but, from his arrival in Britain as a young man, determinedly English, was a painter, etcher and book illustrator, whose patron was, for a time, James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903). Edward Atkinson Hornel (1863-1933),2 also Australian born, but, after he had left the antipodes as a child, to return to family roots in Scotland, determinedly Scottish, had the good fortune to have the Glasgow art dealer Alexander Reid (1854-1928) as his patron. Both these men lived and worked in Japan, and both earned a painterly reputation – and a comfortable living – from Japan. Frank Brangwyn (1867-1956),3 Belgian born, but of Welsh and English stock, was also a painter, who probably never visited Japan, and who did not rely upon ‘Japanese’ paintings for his livelihood, but whose patron was Matsukata Kojiro, the third son of Matsukata Masayoshi, the financial genius of Meiji Japan.
