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Josephine Müntz-Adams / Australia 1861–1949 / Portrait of Mrs J. Brownlie Henderson (Susan Henderson) 1902 / Oil on canvas on composition board / 100 x 80.6cm / Gift of Mr Ian Henderson on behalf of the Henderson family 1988 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
Josephine Müntz-AdamsPortrait of Mrs J. Brownlie Henderson (Susan Henderson) 1902
Not Currently on Display
Josephine Müntz-Adams completed this portrait of Susan Henderson in Brisbane in 1902. Susan Jean McKeown was born in the village of Leenane, Connemara, County Galway in Ireland on 1 September 1868, one of a family of 13 children. She grew up there and worked in the guesthouse owned by her parents in the village. She migrated to Brisbane with her sister Matilda and brother-in-law, Samuel Crawford, an ordained Presbyterian Minister, on 23 December 1886 and lived with them at the presbytery at Enoggera Terrace, Ithaca. It was there that she met her future husband, John Brownlie Henderson (1869–1950).
Family photographs show Susan Henderson to be a strong featured, handsome woman and would have been an appealing subject for Müntz-Adams. How the connection was made between artist and subject in 1902 isn’t known but the connection was maintained when Müntz-Adams returned to teach at the Brisbane Technical College from 1917. The Hendersons were heavily involved in the Red Cross and held parties for returned servicemen at their home ‘Cliveden’, Oxley. Josephine Müntz-Adams has been identified in a group photograph taken at one of these events.
Müntz-Adams also painted a companion portrait of Susan’s husband in the robes of the Senate of The University of Queensland dated 1903, which is now in the collection of the UQ Art Museum.
Born at Barfold near Kyneton, Victoria, in 1861, Josephine Müntz-Adams was the eldest of ten children born to surveyor Thomas Bingham Müntz and his wife, Jane (née Jamison). Müntz-Adams studied in Melbourne at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, in Paris at the Académie Julian and the Académie Delecluse, and in England under German-born portraitist Sir Hubert von Herkomer.
In 1898, Müntz-Adams was awarded a gold medal for portraiture at the Greater Britain Exhibition. She married Samuel Howard Adams that same year, and they lived in Brisbane, where she taught painting at the Brisbane Technical College from 1917 to 1922.
Müntz-Adams is best known for her oil portraits and figure studies. Her work is also represented in the National Gallery of Victoria and Geelong Gallery.