3 Review(s)

About The Book : The Durbar, originally published in 1903, is one of Mortimer Menpes and Dorothy Menpes's first collaborations. Featuring 100 colour prints of Mortimer Menpes's beautiful watercolour paintings with Dorothy's transcribed anecdotes it provides an illustrated record of the commemoration in Delhi of the coronation of King Edward VII. Mortimer Luddington Menpes (1855-1938), was an Australian-born British painter, author, and illustrator. While this was going on, the passengers, with their luggage, had been arriving in streams — judges, peers, duchesses, proprietors of patent medicines, and celebrities of all kinds — one continual stream. In the midst of the arrival of Grosvenor Square, with its pomp and bustle and importance, I turned to watch a group of acrobats vainly trying to attract our attention. It was in December, early in the morning and bitterly cold ; and to see these poor little people, in their torn pink tights and their gaudy waistcoats, with the spangles wearing off, vainly trying to be funny — this was pathetic. There were children, boys and girls, none of them older than ten, springing about on their fathers' shoulders, clapping their blue chapped hands, laughing and making jokes, yet never raising a smile. About The Author : Mortimer Menpes (1855–1938) was an Australian-born British painter, author, printmaker and illustrator. Menpes was born in Port Adelaide, South Australia, the second son of property developer James Menpes (1 August 1818 – 7 December 1906), who with his wife Ann, née Smith, arrived in South Australia from London on the Moffatt in December 1839. Despite losing much property in a great fire of 1857, James Menpes prospered, building commodious shops on St. Vincent Street, Port Adelaide and housing, "Cypress Terrace", on Wakefield Street, Adelaide. James retired from business in 1866 and returned to England with his wife, sons Mortimer and James Henry and two daughters, settling in Chelsea. Some pencil sketches by Menpes were published in the Adelaide Observer in 1903. They are portraits of Sir Charles Todd, Sir James Fergusson and the Rev. Canon Green; Dean Marryat, Sir Anthony Musgrave and Dr. Schomburgk; Charles Mann, Sir Arthur Blyth and William Townsend Sir William Milne, Thomas Playford and George Stevenson.