Mabel was the eldest daughter of Josephine’s brother Edwin Parnell Muntz and Christina Muntz. She was an accomplished pianist and earned first-class honours in her Bachelor of Music from the Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne.
After graduating, she was awarded an Orient Line scholarship and studied in Europe under Percy Grainger, the Dutch master Kivast and the renowned Russian pianist Benno Moiseivitsch in London.
According to family history, she was ‘studying piano in Berlin before World War I and escaped on a Norwegian fishing boat’.
Mabel is said to be one of the young girls depicted in Josephine’s painting The Afghan Trader.
This portrait featured in Josephine’s solo exhibition at the Athenaeum Gallery in 1943.
