E. Phillips FOX

Australian 1865–1915
worked in France 1901–13

E. Phillips Fox was one of the most gifted colourists and figurative artists of his generation who divided his time between Melbourne and Paris, where his atmospheric landscapes and sun-dappled images of elegant women and children engaged in leisurely pursuits enjoyed a favourable reception.

Nude study, 1884, is the artist’s earliest recorded work and was completed whilst Fox was a student at the National Gallery School. As the school offered drawing classes only from antique sculptures or clothed models, it is likely that the composition was completed at one of the Life-Club sessions organised by the students themselves. Following eight years of study, Fox departed for Paris in 1887 and attended classes at the Académie Julian, École des Beaux-Arts and also with the American impressionist T. Alexander Harrison. He joined artists at the popular plein-air sites at Etaples, Brittany and at St Ives, Cornwall, and developed a technique of mixing colours with white to create an even brightness that created the illusion of recording prismatic light.

Geoffrey Smith

Fox returned to Melbourne in 1892 and the following year opened the Melbourne School of Art with Tudor St George Tucker, teaching French academic practice, and a summer school at Charterisville, near Eaglemont, where students were introduced to plein-air and impressionist principles: ‘the garden which sloped down to the Yarra was as beautiful and neglected as it could be. There was a wonderful variety of subjects. We chose our own, and setting up our easels we started to work.’ 1 Studio, Charterisville, c. 1900, shows the weatherboard studio in the garden that Fox erected and worked in during the winter months.

1 Violet Teague, quoted in W. Moore, The Story of Australian Art, Sydney, 1934, vol. 1, p. 78.

Geoffrey Smith

Fox departed for Europe in 1901 and from 1905 lived in Paris. That year he married fellow artist Ethel Carrick. Mother and child is the large-scale study for Motherhood, 1908 (Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney). The theme of mother and child was particularly significant for the artist throughout his career and the genesis for this composition was his sister-in-law Irene holding her daughter Bonnie, taken from sketches the artist made in Melbourne.

In 1900 Fox was commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria to paint The Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay, 1770, 1902, under the terms of the Gilbee Bequest, which required that the picture be painted overseas. He departed for Europe in 1901 and in 1905 married fellow artist, Ethel Carrick, living in Paris for the following eight years. Mother and child, 1908, is the large-scale study for Motherhood, 1908, (in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales), the work with which Fox won the prestigious title of sociétaire (member) at the New Salon. The theme of mother and child was particularly significant for the artist throughout his career and the genesis for this composition was his sister-in-law Irene holding her daughter Bonnie, taken from sketches the artist made in Melbourne. The preparatory version possesses a greater intimacy and informality as well as a freedom of brushwork, which is especially evident in the background.

Geoffrey Smith

One of the most important series that Fox developed during the later part of his career was that of the female nude: ‘Since we have been in Paris, painting nudes out of doors, in our garden—we have fixed things up so that no one can see, & we are not disturbed—very interesting work, but mighty difficult.’ 1 The largest and most ravishing of these is The bathers, 1912, shown at the Royal Academy, London, in which the artist attempts the difficult task of conveying the play of patterns of dappled light over naked flesh, grass and foliage. It is the only work in the group to contain several figures, and although the emphasis is placed on the large seated figure in the foreground (the striped cloth a motif particularly favoured by Fox), the two wading figures in the left background add to the overall atmosphere, providing a greater narrative to a scene that that celebrates colour and light:

He told me once that he no longer saw anything except as a colour-sensation … His gamut of greens is extraordinarily fine and varied, and the purity of his colour still holds the sunlight imprisoned in the pigment.2

1 E. Phillips Fox, letter to Hans Heysen, 13 September 1913, quoted in R. Zubans, E. Phillips Fox: His Life and Work, Melbourne, 1995, p. 155.

2 L. Lindsay, ‘E. Phillips-Fox’, Art in Australia, Sydney, 1918, n.p.

Geoffrey Smith