Dorothy Whistler Menpes
Birthname: Dorothy Whistler Menpes
Nationality: English
Date of birth: 14 September 1883
Place of birth: Fulham London
Date of death: July 1973
Place of death: Minehead, Somerset
Category: model, printmaker
Identity:
Dorothy Whistler Menpes, later Mrs Flower, was the second daughter of the painter, etcher and pupil of Whistler, Mortimer Luddington Menpes (1855-1938) and Rosa Mary Grosse (1855-1936).
There were seven daughters and three sons. The family included Maud Rose Goodwin (1878-1958), Mortimer James (1879-1900), Dorothy Whistler (1883-1973), Walter Mortimer (1886-1945), and Claude (1892-1963).
Whistler was Dorothy's godfather, and she was named in his honour. She married Ivan Charles Flower in 1909.
Life:
Whistler painted Dorothy's portrait in 1884 or 1885. She is shown with one bare foot, having pulled off one of her shoes. Whistler inscribed it 'My Goddaughter Dorothy Whistler Menpes'. Note in Flesh Colour and Grey: Portrait of Miss Dorothy Menpes y260 was exhibited in London at the Society of British Artists in 1885-86. Before or after this Whistler gave the portrait to her father. Whistler also painted a watercolour, Master Menpes m1017, and oil, Master Menpes y261, of her brother. Whistler made an etching of the Menpes children about 1887, The Menpes Children [300], but neither Dorothy nor her brother are recognisable. Theodore Roussel, another artist in Whistler's circle, exhibited a portrait of Dorothy at the New English Art Club in 1887.
She was co-author or author of several books illustrated by Menpes including World's Children and Venice (A. & C. Black, London, 1904).
Bibliography:
'Marriages', The Times, London, 7 September 1909, p. 1 ; 'Mrs Dorothy Flower', The Times, London, 31 July 1973, p. 14; 'Dorothy Flower', Daily Telegraph, London, 21 July 1973.
Menpes, Mortimer, Whistler as I Knew Him, London, 1904 ; MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 ; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 .
