There is new material in the Afterword of the paperback edition of The Lost Mother.
- Aimee Mortill’s will. I had assumed she had died intestate but, thanks to a tip from a reader, I now have a copy. The poignant, handwritten document makes very clear that Aimee wanted her considerable estate to go to her four children, with her daughter receiving a larger share than her brothers, and for her husband William Mortill to get nothing. How William thwarted her wishes remains a mystery
- evidence that Lydia Mortill was a ballet dancer. Again, thanks to a reader, I discovered newspaper advertisements for her dancing in Adelaide in 1918. Once she even performed in front of Dame Nellie Melba who later would become her peer as a fellow member of the Lyceum Club, and a business associate of William Mortill
- there are large number of newspaper articles about the Mortills which are easily accessible online through the National Library’s wonderful newspaper digitisation project. Go to:http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ and search Mortill. You will be rewarded with dozens or articles and many photographs
But, frustratingly, still no clues as to the whereabouts of the lost painting.
May 10, 2010: After I was on Macca’s program on May 2 (“Australia All Over” ABC radio) I was contacted by many people who wanted to follow up on various things I had talked about. One of these contacts was an email from a woman in country Victoria who said she had a portrait: of a young girl who looked like the madonna. She thought it could be the missing portrait of my mother.
My heart was in my mouth while I waited for her to photograph it and email me the picture (Oh how quick these things are today!). I had a good feeling about this. I spoke to the woman on the phone and she said she had bought the picture at an auction. It could be it, I thought.
But after it arrived, I could see that it was not my mother. The hair was different, the eyes not the same. This portrait was probably painted in the late 19th or very early 20th century. It was not my mother.
But the portrait is out there somewhere, and I feel very encouraged by the interest that Macca’s program created.
May 16, 2010: After I went on Jon Faine’s The Conversation Hour in Melbourne on Friday (May 14) I was contacted by a man who is sure he has seen the missing painting in a gallery in Geelong. He told me he saw it last July or August, after he had read my book. The painting in the gallery looked just like my mother, he said, with the same colours, but the pose was different.
I am contacting the Gallery. Fingers crossed!
This was a red herring, sadly.
April 2011
Apologies to everyone for the long gap in reporting on how the search is going. There are a few developments. First, the post below describes another lost painting, by Lydia Mortill. I can’t wait to see the image. It is a water colour of an interior at Tay Creggan. I will try to post the image when I receive it from Carmelo.
6 April, 2011 carmelo salvo wrote:
Dear Anne, well interesting times whether seredipidous, not sure, but I do believe that things and people are put in your life for a reason. My partner Scott and I went to sydney a few weeks ago and he bought your book mainly because of constance parkin as his surname is also parkin, though not related.
He read it and told me it was interesting and I would enjoy it as well. Well apart from constance’s paintings and your writing style which I am enjoying, but, when I read about Lydia Mortill I had this sudden realisation that I had a painting in Launceston Tasmania signed Mortill. When we got home I looked for the painting and found it. It was a watercolour of an interior with chair, dressing table and irises and signed L. Mortill how interesting, however on a more disappointing note, there was another watercolour painting of a turretted house with chimneys, high bushes and trees, also signed by L. Mortill, which i recognised as Tay Creggan (after seeing your phoyograph in your book) however, it was damaged by moths so I destroyed it. I bought them at a bric a brac shop in St Kilda some 25 years ago and I only destroyed the house last year as I did not frame it.
August 2011
I recently visited Tay Creggan as a guest of Strathcona College, the girls’ school which uses the mansion as a year 9 campus. It was wonderful to see the building again and especially to be able to take some photos of the ballroom where Lydia held so many of her fabulous parties:
Dear Anne
I have located vital info about when and where the
‘Virgin’ painting by Constance Stokes, was sold.
Dear Anne
The Lost Mother was given to me by a student who knew that I had studied at the NGV Gallery School
What a consuming read The Lost Mother is for women like me who discovered Constance Stokes and all of those women lost to students who were taught by mentors who considered that the history of art in Melbourne prior to International Modernism was too cringeworthy to teach
Try Jim Alexander, Important Women Artists gallery in the 1980s East Malvern
Sorry this is a quick mail in between classes
thank you so much for your passion to discover the truth
Jenny Darling
Hi, Anne. I have just finished reading your book and realise that there are similarities in our lives. I have a portrait of my mother painted by the artist Ms Rollo Thomson. Ms Thomson lived in Winifred Cres and had a studio at 9 Collins St at the same time as Ms Stokes. My mother, who is soon to turn 85 and still lives around the corner from Winifred Cres, posed for Ms Thomson over many years. I have no idea where her other portraits are.
Regards
Ann
Ann
what amazing coincidences! Do you have an image of the portrait of your mother that you could email me? annesummers@pacific.net.au I would love to see it. Such a small world, not just the art world, but Melbourne and Australia and readers and writers. Thank you for sharing this.
Anne
anne, i only heard part of the conversation on macca, can you discribe the missing painting you are looking for i have a mona lisa pic i got from a secondhand shop but she has brown eyes and the painting is very large i think i heard you say your mum has blue eyes?? this painting is most defently a re-make of mona lisa????? ta! caroline
Anne
I have just read your book and loved it. Pity I hadn’t read it before I you walked past me in Brunswick St recently. I would have spoken to you but seeing we had only met once at Sasha Soldatow’s I thought it would be inappropriate.
Of course Sasha (if he were alive) and his mother would have been able to enlighten you on the Russian community in Melb. I suspect Muriel Maxwell (Russian teacher at Monash Uni married to Prof Ian Maxwell Melb Uni) and Nina Cristensen may have also. These people are all dead but they may be leads for you.
I would like to talk to you re Dorothy Braund and Constance Stokes. Constance Stokes lived across the road from us and was a friend of my mothers in Winifred Cres. DB I have known all my life. She is in a nursing home now and for some time I have been wanting to explore how to write up her life – not that I am the person to do it. I would like to talk to Brenda Niall about it. But I would be interested in knowing when you interviewed her and how recently that was?
10 years ago Dot asked me to curate her work but Rod Eastgate was not pleased about that and persuaded her that as her agent he should control all the artworks. She also asked me to “do something with all the drawers of letters oneday” and I am trying to find out where they have gone in the cleaning up of her house. Dot has gone “dotty” but in talking about the past she is still quite clear and lucid.
For some time I have thought that DB has not received the recognition she deserved although her works are now soldout within an hour of the exhibs opening to people who avidly collect her but do not know her. She was part of the CAS and quite strongly opposed to all the brou ha ha around the Heide group. She was and still is a modernist who maintained and refined her style without following fashion. According to SMorgans book on Clifton Pugh DB was the first critic to review CPs work.
I grew up amongst all these people and have alwasy been amazed by the attention given to some of them over others (like Dot) who deserved greater attention. Even at the current Hiede exhibition on Cubism CS and DB are not included.
I would love to talk to you about some of this and about looking for missing art. DB once had me look for a missing picture of hers and it got v sticky!
Sally Semmens
9415 8585 home
32 Lt Gore St Fitzroy
Hilary Mc Phee knows who I am if you want to discuss.
Fascinated with the your story & would like to know if any progress made with the still missing paintings