XX. MENPES.

THOUGH Mr. Mortimer Menpes had etched not a few coppers before he gave us the long series which recorded his impressions of Japan—and though, no doubt, he has etched from time to time since then—it is by the forty plates which constitute that Japanese set that he establishes his best claim to be regarded as an artist, serious and interesting. Traces of the Whistlerian vision, if not of the Whistlerian method, are perceptible in these memoranda of the people and the theatre, and of the long and low-built towns that stretch themselves sometimes along the edge of sleeping waters. But the art of Mr. Menpes is not all of it derivative. Something there is that is of himself alone, in the impression received and in the manner of its registration. He has economy of means, and yet abundance of resource. He is not merely a draughtsman

MORTIMER MENPES. “JAPANESE GIRLS.”

who has chosen to etch: he is an etcher whose feeling for the capacity of his particular medium has in it much that is instinctive.