ETHEL CARRICK FOX

Estate of the late John Hetherington;
by descent to his widow Mollie Hetherington

Possibly in Exhibition of Pictures by Mrs E. Phillips Fox (Ethel Carrick), Anthony Hordern’s Fine Art Gallery, Sydney, 6-22 November 1913 as ‘Notes of Sydney Harbour’

On Balmoral Beach, Sydney depicts one of the most picturesque of Sydney’s beaches. Popular with artists since at least the 1880s, when a plein-air artists’ painting colony was based there, Balmoral is situated at the mouth of Middle Harbour, with views to North Head, Manly and Clontarf. Ethel Carrick Fox portrays elegant women and energetic children beside the brilliant blue waters of the harbour with all the bright colour, supremely confident brushwork and delightful spontaneity for which she is best known.

After their marriage in 1905, Ethel Carrick and Emanuel Phillips Fox often visited French seaside resorts to paint sunny impressions of the beaches, crowded with prosperous holidaymakers. Carrick had trained as an artist at the Slade School in London and met her future husband when they were both at the St Ives open-air painting colony in Cornwall. Her first visit of many to Australia during her long and successful career was in 1908. Then in 1913 the Foxes spent some months in Sydney, painting views of the harbour, especially around Cremorne where they were staying at ‘Redcourt’ on Cremorne Road – across Middle Head from Balmoral – and on the ocean at Manly. Carrick was in Sydney by mid August 1913; Phillips Fox followed in October after completing a portrait commission; and they returned to Melbourne in December.¹

Ethel Carrick Fox held a one-person exhibition in Sydney in November 1913 and it is possible that On Balmoral Beach, Sydney was one of the group of canvases titled in the catalogue simply Notes of Sydney Harbour. Her well known, larger Sydney seaside painting Manly Beach, Summer is here, also 1913 and now in the collection of the Manly Art Gallery, is similarly vibrant.

The first recorded owner of this painting was the biographer and journalist John Hetherington (1907-1974). The author of Australian Painters: Forty Profiles in 1963, his collection included works of art given him by Norman Lindsay, Louis Kahan and others.

1.  The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 15 August 1913, p. 15; in Zubans, R., E. Phillips Fox: His Life and Art, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1995, p. 165.