Emanuel Phillips Fox

Private collection, Canberra
Australian and International Paintings, Sculpture and Works on Paper, Deutscher-Menzies, Melbourne, 22 November 1998, lot 277
Private collection, Melbourne; purchased from the above

Ruth Zubans, E. Phillips Fox: His Life and Art, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 1995, pl. C41, cat. 293, illus.

From the latter part of the nineteenth until well into the twentieth century, the beach was a popular place for French and Australian artists. In France there were Eugene Boudin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Georges Seurat, while Claude Monet painted at Trouville in 1870, many years before this fashionable French watering resort attracted Emanuel Phillips Fox and his wife Ethel Carrick. In Australia, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder and Frederick McCubbin had their favourite Melbourne bayside painting spots at Mentone, Sandringham and Brighton, and Sydney's Coogee and Manly, to mention but a few. The popularity of the beach continues even today, albeit in a very different mood in the hands of Melbourne artist Rick Amor, with his compelling images inspired by Frankston.

In the early years of the twentieth century Fox and his fellow Australian, Rupert Bunny, painted many beach scenes in France. During a visit to Melbourne in 1908, Fox enjoyed picniking with the family at Chelsea on Port Phillip Bay, happy occasions which resulted in this and several other engaging studies. Beach Scene has all the freshness, immediacy and vivacity of handling that comes from painting in the open air directly from the motif. It is ideally suited to capturing the holiday mood of children enjoying themselves on the beach. In a related oil sketch, Port Phillip - Melbourne, circa 1908, the interest has moved to the pleasure of the waters, the sails of a yacht seen in the distance. Back in France, these same interests are picked up in another engaging work, The Beach at Trouville, circa 1909, the subject finding its apotheosis in Fox's two masterly versions of Bathing Hour, circa 1909 (Queensland Art Gallery and the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum), the first exhibited in the London Royal Academy and the New Salon, Paris.