“June Mendoza was extraordinary. There are so many threads to pull together; her career as a society and royal portrait painter, her life as a comic book artist, her energy, her love of music, her patronage of Australian musicians, and so much more. To be smiling and painting when you’re 99 years old has to be the testament of a glorious life. She was beautiful and funny, sparkling and gifted.
Her family told me that she had a joyful day at the RP opening – for which we should all be grateful.”
-PRP Anthony Connolly
June’s daughter, Kim, has also wrote:
OBE 2004
“I’m probably more useful talking about her the person, her adventurous spirit. How she happily did the climb to the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, adored camping trips with us around the US, France and the UK. She went to all our concerts and gigs, danced and befriended everyone.
She painted us all many times throughout childhood, grumpy teen hood, adulthood. It was amazing to watch her.
During lockdown, 2021, her project was to paint the entire family, dogs, cats and chickens included. That portrait was exhibited in 2022/3.“
THE TIMES
June Mendoza obituary: doyenne of portrait painters
Dynamic artist whose subjects included prime ministers, musicians and the royal family
June Mendoza was known for her gimlet eye: hazel in colour, piercingly perceptive, able to charm anyone into sitting for her. She was often commissioned to paint the royal family — Elizabeth II five times, plus three Prince Philips, three Charleses, two Dianas and one Queen Mother, all at breakneck speed because “they’re all so busy, poor dears”. But what she enjoyed most was making non-commissioned “pickups” — catching someone’s eye, liking the look of them and making a proposal.
One third of her output were pickups from the street or the greengrocer’s. Madeline Bell, the jazz singer, was spied across a restaurant (“I had a ball with her,” Mendoza recalled) and the actress Janie Dee was sitting in front of Mendoza in the stalls at a theatre. The Australian socialite and conservationist John Rendall, owner of the infamous Christian the Lion, was a pickup who unfortunately died of coronavirus before the paint had dried. (…)
June Yvonne Mendoza was born in Melbourne in 1924, the daughter of a theatrical couple: John Morton, a violinist, and Dot Mendoza, a composer and pianist, who once played Dame Edna Everage’s bridesmaid Madge Allsop. In childhood, June’s natural gift for catching a likeness was clear: the conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent agreed to sit for her. “I found I could capture people’s faces,” she told The Guardian. “It’s like having perfect pitch. That doesn’t make you a musician or a composer automatically, it’s just a phenomenon.” (…)
June Mendoza, ‘Isla Baring’
Every spring, at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters exhibition in the Mall Galleries, Mendoza would be quite invisible, surrounded by subjects old and new. Sitters became friends — John and Norma Major, Floella Benjamin and Angela Rippon — though she struggled somewhat with Margaret Thatcher (“So controlling … Nothing there”). Princess Diana gave her bouquets. The baritone Sir Thomas Allen serenaded her with Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes. If asked about a portrait capturing the soul, she replied that she strove to find the spirit in a character but could not claim the soul.
Undaunted by huge projects, she captured 440 members of the House of Commons in 1986 — the only time she had recourse to photographs. She also painted all the Chelsea Pensioners. In 2000, Mendoza was instrumental in creating the People’s Portraits exhibition, now housed in Girton College, Cambridge: portraits of ordinary people in their workplaces. A scaffolder, a picture hanger, a baker; “real people as they are, like me, getting on with work,” she said. (…)
June Mendoza, ‘Trader Faulkner’ & ‘Peter and Leslie Macleod-Miller’
