Art, Love and Life: Ethel Carrick and E Phillips Fox

Venue: Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Dates: 16 April – 7 August 2011
Cost: Adult: $12; Concession: $10; Members: $9 (Discount available to Gallery and Foundation
Members); Secondary students: $6; Children (12 years & under): FREE
Family (1–2 Adults & Children aged 13–17): $30
Season tickets also available

The story of one of Australian art’s most significant marriages will be told for the first time in a new exhibition opening this month at the Queensland Art Gallery.

The personal artistic union of Ethel Carrick & E Phillips Fox, two of Australia’s most significant late impressionist painters, will be celebrated in the major exhibition, which runs from April 16 to August 7, 2011.

Queensland Art Gallery Director Tony Ellwood said ‘Art, Love and Life: Ethel Carrick and E Phillips Fox’ would includes more than 100
paintings, and give a fresh view of both artists’ careers, telling their stories jointly for the first time in a major institution.

‘Ethel Carrick and E Phillips Fox were painters of modern life at the turn of last century and this exhibition provides an insight into their active artistic careers and extensive travels together around Europe, North Africa and Australia,’ he said.

‘Audiences will encounter works dating from 1880s to the 1940s, including Carrick and Fox’s much-loved beach and North African scenes, flower and vegetable markets, colourful parks and intimate views of families, women and children,’ Mr Ellwood said.

Queensland Art Gallery Curator Angela Goddard said the works would be drawn from the National Gallery of Australia and state and private collections, as well as the Queensland Art Gallery’s own holdings.

‘This exhibition examines Carrick and Fox’s works through the prism of their marriage, and is a continuation of the Gallery’s commitment to new scholarship on Australian art,’ she said.

Melbourne-born Emanuel Phillips Fox (1865-1915) married the English-born painter Ethel Carrick (1872- 1952) in 1905. Together they spent a decade living in Paris and travelling through England, France, Italy, Spain, North Africa and Australia, painting modern life as they saw it along the way.

‘Carrick and Fox’s works celebrate a way of life that was leisured and elegant, such as Phillip Fox’s Al Fresco 1905, a sophisticated, urbane family gathering, and Carrick Fox’s Manly Beach – Summer is here 1913, a lively beach scene marking the birth of Australian beach culture.
‘Other highlights of the exhibition include Carrick and Fox’s French flower market 1909, and the Queensland Art Gallery’s much-loved Bathing hour 1909 by Phillips Fox, an intimate portrait of a mother and child at the beach.

‘Many of Ethel Carrick Fox’s works, in particular, have been hidden away in private collections until now, and audiences will also see a new side to E Phillips Fox’s art,’ Ms Goddard said.

As well as creating their own beautiful works, the couple were influential in promoting art in Australia. Fox helped establish the Melbourne School of Art in 1893, and continued to teach and promote Australian artists throughout his career.

When Phillips Fox passed away in 1915 at the age of fifty, his wife continued to carry on his legacy, tirelessly promoting his work, while continuing with her own painting career, teaching and travelling extensively.