ETHEL CARRICK FOX 1872-1952

Oil on canvas Signed lower left

Painted in 1911 Provenance Clune Galleries, Sydney; purchased by Elder Smith Goldsbrough Mort Limited, 30 October 1974 (label on the reverse); transferred to Elders IXL in 1985 Exhibited Salon d'Automne, Paris, 1912, cat. 299 as 'Marché à Bou-Saada' Paintings by Mrs E. Phillips Fox (Miss Ethel Carrick), Melbourne, 1913, cat. 4 as 'Arabs bargaining' Exhibition of Pictures by Mrs E. Phillips Fox (Miss Ethel Carrick), Sydney, 1913, cat. 3 as 'Arabs bargaining' Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français, 21e Exposition, Grand Palais, Paris, 2-28 February 1913, cat. 150 as 'Le Marché de Bou-Saâda' Elders IXL Collection: Masterworks of Australian Painting and French Barbizon School, Colonial, Contemporary, Continental, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2 March - 1 April 1984, cat. 4, illus. Capturing the Orient: Hilda Rix Nicholas and Ethel Carrick in the East, Waverley City Gallery, Melbourne, 16 July - 29 August 1993, cat. 32 (label on the reverse) The Edwardians: Secrets and Desires, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 12 March - 14 June and Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 9 July - 12 September 2004, cat. 17, illus. Reference Ron Radford, Elders IXL Collection: Masterworks of Australian Painting and French Barbizon School, Colonial, Contemporary, Continental, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 1984, p. 34, cat. 4, illus. John Pigot, Capturing the Orient: Hilda Rix Nicholas and Ethel Carrick in the East, Waverley City Gallery, Melbourne, 1993, p. 29 Susanna de Vries, Ethel Carrick Fox: Travels and Triumphs of a Post-Impressionist, Pandanus Press, Brisbane, 1997, illus. p. 66 Anne Gray et al., The Edwardians: Secrets and Desires, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2004, p. 64, fig. 60, p. 151, cat. 17 illus. Trained in London, at the Slade School under Philip Wilson Steer and Henry Tonks, Ethel Carrick met her future husband Emanuel Phillips Fox when they were both at the plein-air (open air) painting colony in St Ives, Cornwall. They married in May 1905 and, settling in Paris, came increasingly under the influence of modern French painting with its vibrant colours and lively brushwork.(1) In fact, Carrick's colour sense was more adventurous than her husband's, as seen clearly here in Arabs bargaining. Her first visit of many to Australia during her long and successful career was for several months in 1908. In the late winter and early spring of 1911, 'determined to get some settled sunlight', the Foxes travelled with a painting pupil 'across to Algiers from there South into the interior a place called Bou Saada - where [they] stayed six weeks - then back to Algiers - then to Tangiers & on to Cadiz'.(2) They returned home through Spain. Carrick sent paintings of scenes from this North African journey for exhibition in the Autumn Salon in Paris that year and the present work in 1912; and also to the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français in 1913. She was made a sociétaire of the Salon d'Automne in 1911. By the time Carrick and her husband were in Bou Saada, many western artists had travelled to North Africa in search of exotic oriental subject matter. Monet and Renoir had come from France; the English John Lavery and American Henry Tanner were among notable artist visitors; as well as Australians including Hilda Rix Nicholas, Margaret Preston, Bessie Davidson and William Beckwith McInnes. 'For Carrick, the intense light and colourful costumes of the Arab people provided a rich visual spectacle that allowed her to experiment with ever more intense blocks of colour and pattern in her work. In Arabs bargaining, Carrick's interest is as much in describing this commonplace market scene as in constructing a painting of abstract elements and high-keyed and vibrant colours'.(3) Dr Ruth Zubans has suggested that this is possibly the same locality depicted by Fox in his painting <