Ethel Carrick

Background

Ethel Carrick was born on February 7, 1872 in Uxbridge, Hillingdon, United Kingdom, the daughter of Albert William Carrick, a well-established draper, and his wife Emma, née Filmer.

Education

After education at home she joined the Guildhall School of Music, and later trained with Francis Bate and at the Slade School of Fine Art under Brown and Tonks.

Career

Ethel first showed her work in London in 1903 and later exhibited widely in Britain, France and Australia. Carrick and her husband came to Australia in 1908 and 1913, exhibiting and painting in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide. The outbreak of war brought them back to Melbourne from a trip to Tahiti, and in 1915 they helped to organize an art union in aid of war funds and the French Red Cross. Ethel was one of a group of Australian women artists who sought to establish themselves in Paris and London through joint exhibitions in Europe in the 1920s. By 1908 Carrick Fox was a member of the Union Internationale des Beaux-Arts et des Lettres; in 1911 she became sociétaire of the Salon d'Automne, later an associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and prior to 1913 was the vice-president of the International Union of Women Painters.

After her husband's death on October 8, 1915 she remained in Melbourne until 1916, then lived mostly abroad, travelling extensively in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. She returned to Australia in 1925, 1933, 1940, 1948 and 1952, arranging exhibitions of their work and painting in several of the cities and along the rivers of northern New South Wales. Her works are lively and colourful: she painted market scenes, parks and flower gardens, beach and Arab scenes, genre interiors and especially flower pieces. In her lifetime, Carrick's reputation was eclipsed by her husband's, in part because she spent a good deal of her time promoting his career rather than her own, lobbying Australian collectors and curators to buy his work and arranging exhibitions both while he was alive and posthumously. Before her death in a Melbourne hospital on June 17, 1952 she had lived at the Lyceum Club in Melbourne.

Achievements

• Carrick is known for her flower paintings, landscapes and scenes of outdoor urban life in parks and on beaches.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Children and Nurses

  • Marche aux fleurs à Venise

  • The Quay at Dinard

  • French Flower Market

  • Portrait of Rose Levy

  • Flower market, Nice

  • The Spanish Courtyard

  • Manly Beach, Summer is Here

  • In the Luxembourg Gardens

  • Sur la Plage

  • Loves Me, Loves Me Not

  • Flower Markets with White Umbrella

  • La marée haute a Saint-Malô (High tide at St Malô)

Religion

Ethel was an Anglican, but in the 1940s joined the Theosophical Society in Sydney.

Views

Ethel fought for the recognition and placement of her husband's art in major Australian galleries and criticized the limited inclusion of Impressionist works in the National Gallery of Victoria.

Membership

• Union Internationale des Beaux-Arts et des Lettres

• Salon d'Automne

• Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts

• International Union of Women Painters

• Heidelberg School

Personality

Interesting and urbane, Ethel Carrick Fox possessed a strong and independent personality.

Connections

On 9 May 1905 at St Peter's Church, Ealing, London, Ethel Carrick married Emanuel Phillips Fox; they then lived in Paris until 1913, travelling widely in Europe and northern Africa. Their marriage was childless.

Father:

Albert William Carrick

Mother:

Emma Filmer Carrick

Spouse:

Emanuel Phillips Fox

References

• Ethel Carrick Fox: Travels and triumphs of a post-impressionist
  1997
• Art, Love & Life: Ethel Carrick and E Phillips Fox
  2011
• Fine Australian Paintings 1987 Exhibition Catalog
  1987