Emanuel Phillips Fox (12 March 1865 – 8 October 1915) was an Australian

impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

painter. Born and raised in

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

, Victoria, Fox studied at the

National Gallery of Victoria Art School The National Gallery of Victoria Art School, associated with the National Gallery of Victoria, was a private fine arts college founded in 1867 and was Australia's leading art school of 50 years. It is also referred to as the 'National Gallery S ...

. He travelled to

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

to study in 1886 and remained in Europe until 1892, when he returned to Melbourne and led what is considered the second phase of the

Heidelberg School The Heidelberg School was an Australian art movement of the late 19th century. It has been described as Australian impressionism. Melbourne art critic Sidney Dickinson coined the term in an 1891 review of works by Arthur Streeton and Walter ...

, an impressionist art movement which had developed in the city during his absence. He spent over a decade in Europe in the early 20th century before finally settling in Melbourne, where he died. Fox's wife

Ethel Carrick Ethel Carrick, later Ethel Carrick Fox (7 February 1872 – 17 June 1952) was an English Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painter. Much of her career was spent in France and in Australia, where she was associated with the movement known as ...

was also a noted impressionist painter.

Education

Emanuel Phillips Fox was born on 12 March 1865 to the photographer Alexander Fox and Rosetta Phillips at 12 Victoria Parade in Fitzroy, Melbourne, into a family of lawyers whose firm,

DLA Piper DLA Piper is a law firm with offices in over 40 countries across the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. It was founded in 2005 through the merger between three law firms: San Diego–based ''Gray Cary Ware & Freiden ...

still exists. He studied art at the

in Melbourne from 1878 until 1886 under

George Folingsby George Frederick Folingsby (23 August 1828 – 4 January 1891) was an Irish-born Australian painter and art educator. Folingsby was born in the County of Wicklow, Ireland. At the age of 18 he emigrated to Canada. Later he went to New York City w ...

; his fellow students included

John Longstaff Sir John Campbell Longstaff (10 March 1861 – 1 October 1941) was an Australian painter, war artist and a five-time winner of the Archibald Prize for portraiture. Longstaff was one of the most prolific portraitists of the Edwardian period, pain ...

Frederick McCubbin Frederick McCubbin (25 February 1855 – 20 December 1917) was an Australian artist, art teacher and prominent member of the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism. Born and raised in Melbourne, Victoria, McCubb ...

, and David Davies, who like him, joined the bohemian

Buonarotti Club The Buonarotti Club was a bohemian artists' society in Melbourne, Australia between 1883 and 1887, associated with Heidelberg School of painters. Foundation The Buonarotti Club was established in May 1883 by Cyrus Mason (c. 1829 – 18 August ...

, and

Rupert Bunny Rupert Charles Wulsten Bunny (29 September 186425 May 1947) was an Australian painter. Born and raised in Melbourne, Victoria, he achieved success and critical acclaim as an expatriate in ''fin-de-siècle'' Paris. He gained an honourable mention ...

. In 1886, he travelled to Paris and enrolled at the

Académie Julian The () was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907). The school was active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number and qual ...

under

William-Adolphe Bouguereau William-Adolphe Bouguereau (; 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905) was a French Academic art, academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of Classicism, classical subjects, with a ...

, where he gained first prize in his year for design, and

École des Beaux-Arts ; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth centu ...

(1887–1890), where his masters included

Jean-Léon Gérôme Jean-Léon Gérôme (; 11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as Academic painting, academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living art ...

, who with Bouguereau was among the most famous artists of the time. While at the Beaux Arts, he was awarded a first prize for painting. He was greatly influenced by the fashionable school of ''

en plein air ''En plein air'' (; French language, French for 'outdoors'), or plein-air painting, is the act of painting outdoors. This method contrasts with studio painting or academic rules that might create a predetermined look. The theory of 'En plein ai ...

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

. He exhibited at the

Paris Salon The Salon (), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art event in the Western world. At the ...

in 1890, and returned to Melbourne the same year.

Australia

Fox had a considerable influence as a teacher on

Australian art Australian art is a broad spectrum of art created in or about Australia, or by Australians overseas, spanning from Prehistory of Australia, prehistoric times to the present day. The art forms include, but are not limited to, Indigenous Australi ...

. In October 1892, Fox opened the Melbourne School of Art with Tudor St. George Tucker, which ran until 1899, and in which the two artists taught Impressionism in the manner of the French schools in which both had studied, and with more liberal methods than the academy-style instruction of the National Gallery of Victoria art schools. A summer school was offered at

Charterisville Charterisville is the name given to a property in Ivanhoe, Victoria, Australia, closely associated with the Heidelberg School of Australian art. David Charteris McArthur, Melbourne's first banker (with the Bank of Australasia), sportsman (playe ...

that Fox and Tucker had established in the old mansion above the

Yarra River The Yarra River or historically, the Yarra Yarra River, (Kulin languages: ''Berrern'', ''Birr-arrung'', ''Bay-ray-rung'', ''Birarang'', ''Birrarung'', and ''Wongete'') is a perennial river in south-central Victoria, Australia. The lower st ...

East Ivanhoe Ivanhoe East is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 10 km north-east from Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Banyule local government area. Ivanhoe East recorded a population of 3,762 at the 2021 cens ...

, the lease of which they had taken over from

Walter Withers Walter Herbert Withers (22 October 1854 – 13 October 1914) was an English-born Australian landscape artist and a member of the Heidelberg School of Australian impressionists. Biography Withers was born on 22 October 1854, at Handsworth ...

in 1893. It was Australia's first recognised summer school of art. Its women students, including Ina Gregory, Mary Meyer, Bertha Merfield, Henrietta Irving, Ursula Foster and Helen Peters were accommodated in rooms of the stone house and a chaperon and housekeeper looked after them.

Violet Teague Violet Helen Evangeline Teague (21 February 1872 – 30 September 1951) was an Australian artist, noted for her painting, printmaking and her critical writings on art. Early life and training The only daughter of Melbourne homeopath James Te ...

may have been their tutor. His student Mary Meyer was the subject Fox's portrait of her at age twenty, in the course of which Fox made a finished charcoal drawing. His Whistleresque ''Portrait of Mary, Daughter of Professor Nanson'' was exhibited in 1898 at an exhibition of Australian Art in London, at the

Grafton Galleries The Grafton Galleries, often referred to as the Grafton Gallery, was an art gallery in Mayfair, London. The French art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel showed the first major exhibition in Britain of Impressionist paintings there in 1905. Roger Fry's t ...

, and is now held in the

National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and list of most visited art museums in the world, most visited art mu ...

. Her husband, Felix Meyer, was Fox's patron. Another student, Ursula Foster, was the model for his model for Fox's
Lady in Black
' and ''A'' ''Love Story''. In his brief career with the

, Fox was noted for his figure compositions and subdued

landscapes A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

, often painted as

nocturne A nocturne is a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night. History The term ''nocturne'' (from French '' nocturne'' "of the night") was first applied to musical pieces in the 18th century, when it indicated an ensembl ...

s, utilising a low-key palette in which the colours, although limited in range, were related to each other "with the utmost delicacy and inventiveness," to quote Australian artist and art scholar

James Gleeson James Timothy Gleeson (21 November 1915 – 20 October 2008) was an Australian artist. He served on the board of the National Gallery of Australia. Early life Gleeson was born in the Hornsby in 1915 and attended East Sydney Technical Colleg ...

. The emphasis on landscapes may have been at least partly a response to market demand – landscapes found more ready acceptance, and ''Art Students'', a figurative genre painting now recognised as one of his best, first exhibited at the

Victorian Artists Society The Victorian Artists Society, which can trace its establishment to 1856 in Melbourne, promotes artistic education, art classes and Art museum, gallery hire art gallery, exhibition in Australia. It was formed in March 1888 when the Victorian Acad ...

in 1895, remained unsold until 1943.

Europe

In 1901, he was given a commission under the Gilbee bequest to paint a historical picture of ''The Landing of Captain Cook'' for the Melbourne gallery. One of the conditions of the bequest was that the picture must be painted overseas and Fox accordingly left for London. He explained his decision to base himself in the European art world in a 1903 letter to Frederick McCubbin: "I am quite certain that the only way is to exhibit alongside the best of the work here, and that one man shows, and colonial or Australian exhibitions in London are of very little good." Both the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

and the Salon were bastions of establishment art, remote from the

modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

Braque Georges Braque ( ; ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1905, and the role he play ...

Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

and the

School of Paris The School of Paris (, ) refers to the French and émigré artists who worked in Paris in the first half of the 20th century. The School of Paris was not a single art movement or institution, but refers to the importance of Paris as a centre o ...

, and Fox's biographer, art historian Ruth Zubans, describes the Salon as celebrating elegance and femininity "...filtered through Impressionist experience and academic training". E Phillips Fox Bathing Hour

Fox enjoyed considerable success in Paris and London, becoming in 1894 the first Australian to be awarded a third-class gold medal at the Salon for ''Portrait of my Cousin'' (now in the

). On 9 May 1905, he married the artist

St Peter's Church, Ealing St Peter's Church, Ealing, is an Anglican parish church in Mount Park Road, North Ealing, in the Diocese of London, regarded by Sir John Betjeman as an example of a Victorian-built church "of which we can be proud". Held to be one of the premie ...

. They toured Italy and Spain, then in 1908 settled in Paris, where he was elected an associate of the

Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (SNBA; ; ) was the term under which two groups of French artists united, the first for some exhibitions in the early 1860s, the second since 1890 for annual exhibitions. 1862 Established in 1862 by the painter a ...

. He returned to Melbourne on a visit in that year and held a successful one-man show at the Guildhall gallery. Two years later he became a full member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, the first Australian artist to attain that honour. He was exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy. In 1912 he was elected a member of the International Society of Painters and in the same year spent some time painting in Spain and Algeria.

Return to Australia

In 1913, he returned to Australia, marking the occasion with an exhibition of some seventy works. Edith Susan Boyd was one of the main models featured throughout this collection of works. The show was reported with enthusiasm in the local press, the Melbourne '' Argus'' writing: "With light and atmosphere always the ruling motive, there is revealed in his themes something of the infinite beauty discoverable in everyday things..." The writer might have had in mind this charming and typical work titled ''The Arbour''. A final aspect of Fox's oeuvre worth noting are his official commissions. ''The Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay'', the most important of these works, holds more than a hint of his teacher Gérôme; and every Australian might be surprised to find that Fox made a copy of Nathaniel Dance's '' Portrait of Captain Cook'', an icon probably so ubiquitous as to have sunk unnoticed but ever-present into the national psyche.

Death

Fox died of cancer in a Fitzroy hospital on 8 October 1915, aged 50. His wife survived him by 36 years, but there were no children. His nephew Leonard Phillips Fox was a prolific writer and pamphleteer for

Communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

and humanitarian causes.

Critical assessment

When compared with

Charles Conder Charles Edward Conder (24 October 1868 – 9 February 1909) was an English-born painter, lithographer and designer. He emigrated to Australia and was a key figure in the Heidelberg School, arguably the beginning of a distinctively Australi ...

and Sir

Arthur Streeton Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton (8 April 1867 – 1 September 1943) was an Australian landscape painter and a leading member of the Heidelberg School, also known as Australian Impressionism. Early life Streeton was born in Mount Moriac, Victoria ...

, Fox shows more fascination with the "effects of dappled light" than to the "sunny vistas" one finds in the other two painters' Heidelberg paintings. He is described as an artist who "remained committed to a late nineteenth century aesthetic that paid homage to Impressionism while retaining the tonal values of academic realism".

Gallery of paintings

File:E Phillips Fox Sunlight Effect.jpg, ''Sunlight Effect'', c. 1889 File:The Cabbage Patch by E Phillips Fox.jpg, ''The Caggage Patch'', 1889 File:E Phillips Fox My Cousin.jpg, ''Portrait of my Cousin'', 1893 File:Dd104246(1).jpg, ''Heidelberg'', 1900 File:E Phillips Fox A Love Story.jpg, ''A Love Story'', 1903 File:E Phillips Fox - Al fresco - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Al Fresco'', 1904 File:E Phillips Fox Monastery, San Lazzaro.jpg, ''Monastery, San Lazzaro'', 1907 File:E Phillips Fox - The ferry - Google Art Project.jpg, ''The Ferry'', 1911 File:After the Bath.jpg, ''After the Bath'', 1911 File:Emanuel Phillips Fox - Nasturtiums, 1912.jpg, '' Nasturtiums'', 1912 File:Emanuel Phillips Fox - On the Balcony, 1912.jpg, '' On the Balcony'', 1912 File:E Phillips Fox - The green parasol, 1912.jpg, ''The Green Parasol'', 1912 File:E Phillips Fox The Lesson.jpg, ''The Lesson'', 1912 File:E Phillips Fox The Bathers.jpg, ''The Bathers'', 1912

References

External links

"E. (Emanuel) Phillips Fox"
Gravesite at the

Brighton Brighton ( ) is a seaside resort in the city status in the United Kingdom, city of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, England, south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze Age Britain, Bronze Age, R ...

General Cemetery (Victoria)
E. Phillips Fox
at the

Art Gallery of New South Wales The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1883 and 1958, is located in The Domain, Sydney, Australia. It is the most import ...

E. Phillips Fox
at the

''A Love Story'' (1903)
,

Art Gallery of Ballarat The Art Gallery of Ballarat is the oldest regional art gallery in Australia. It was established in 1884 as the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery by a company of interested citizens led by James Oddie. It initially rented out the first floor of the Balla ...

BiographyEmanuel Phillips Fox
at the

Art Renewal Center The Art Renewal Center (ARC) is a non-profit, educational organization, which hosts an online museum dedicated to realist art. The ARC was founded by New Jersey businessman, author, and art collector Fred Ross. Particular emphasis is given to ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fox, Emanuel Phillips 1865 births 1915 deaths 19th-century Australian painters 20th-century Australian painters Australian portrait painters People from Fitzroy, Victoria Painters from Melbourne National Gallery of Victoria Art School alumni People from the Colony of Victoria