Following the trail
 
This page will be updated at regular intervals. Viewers are reminded that the research on Lizzie Bentwitch and Agnes Paterson has the status of work in progress and is liable to change as more information becomes available. Already one visitor has provided information about May Maxwell. The hunt continues.
Mrs W. Mortill

Mrs Mortill's husband William was manager of the Melbourne Carrying Company for over twenty years from about 1902. This image is a reproduction from the original which has not yet surfaced. The portrait was exhibited at Victorian Artists' Society exhibitions in October 1927 and April 1930. It also was shown at the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy London in May 1929. Circumstances regarding the latter are not known but Lizzie Bentwitch did have a cousin who was an academician. Miniatures seldom attracted the notice of art critics. However, a Frenchman, Henri Voisin, was much taken by the Mortill piece which he saw in London and described as a work of "elegance and feeling" by an artist who captured both physical resemblance and the psychological mentality of the subject. Paterson "centres it particularly in the look" he wrote, "which she transforms into a living mirror of the soul."

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