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

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

painter. After studying 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 ...

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

, Fox travelled to Paris to study in 1886. He 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 latterly been described as Australian impressionism. Melbourne art critic Sidney Dickinson coined the term in an 1891 review of works by Arthur Streeton and ...

, an impressionist art movement which had grown 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.

Education

Emanuel Phillips Fox was born on 12 March 1865 to the photographer Alexander Fox and Rosetta Phillips at 12 Victoria Parade in

Fitzroy Fitzroy or FitzRoy may refer to: People As a given name *Several members of the Somerset family (Dukes of Beaufort) have this as a middle-name: **FitzRoy Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan (1788–1855) ** Henry Charles FitzRoy Somerset, 8th Duke of Beau ...

, Melbourne, into a family of lawyers whose firm,

DLA Piper DLA Piper is a multinational law firm with offices in over 40 countries throughout the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. In 2021, it had a total revenue of US$3.47 billion, an average profit per equity partner of ...

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 Cit st ...

; 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. His cousin Will Longstaff was also a painter and war artist. Longstaff was known ...

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 ...

, David Davies 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 mentio ...

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

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

under

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

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

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

(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 academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living artist by 1880." The ran ...

, 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 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 air' painting ...

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

. He exhibited at the

Paris Salon The Salon (french: Salon), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art ...

in 1890, and returned to Melbourne the same year.

Australia

Emanuel Phillips Fox - Art Students, 1895

In October 1892, Fox opened the Melbourne School of Art with

Tudor St. George Tucker Tudor St George Tucker (28 April 1862 – 21 December 1906) was an English painter who spent a large part of his short life in Australia. He was best known for his landscapes and portraits of women. Biography He was the son of Captain Charlton ...

, where he taught European ideas and techniques. He had a considerable influence as a teacher on

Australian art Australian art is any art made in or about Australia, or by Australians overseas, from prehistoric times to the present. This includes Aboriginal, Colonial, Landscape, Atelier, early-twentieth-century painters, print makers, photographers, and ...

during this period. 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 Terrestrial ecoregion, land, its landforms, and how they integrate with Nature, natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionar ...

, 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 Sydney district of Hornsby in 1915 and attended East Sydn ...

. 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 gallery hire exhibition in Australia. It was formed in March 1888 when the Victorian Academy of Arts (previously Vi ...

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 on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...

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

modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

Braque Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...

Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

and the

School of Paris The School of Paris (french: École de 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 ...

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

National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum. The NGV houses an encyclopedic art collection across two ...

). On 9 May 1905, he married the artist

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 ...

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 being amongst "the noblest churches we possess". Held to be one of the premier architectural ...

. 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; ; en, National Society of Fine Arts) 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 Es ...

. 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 Argus is the Latinized form of the Ancient Greek word ''Argos''. It may refer to: Greek mythology * See Argus (Greek myth) for mythological characters named Argus **Argus (king of Argos), son of Zeus (or Phoroneus) and Niobe **Argus (son of Ar ...

'' 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 (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

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 Mt Moriac, Victoria, sou ...

, 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".

Paintings

File:E Phillips Fox My Cousin.jpg, ''Portrait of my Cousin'' (1893) File:E Phillips Fox - A Love Story, 1903.jpg, ''A Love Story'' (1903) File:E Phillips Fox - Al fresco - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Al Fresco'' (1904) File:E philips fox venice 1907.jpg, ''Venice'' (1907) File:E Phillips Fox - The ferry - Google Art Project.jpg, ''The Ferry'' (1911) File:After the Bath.jpg, ''After the Bath'' (1911), possibly with Edith Anderson as the model File:Emanuel Phillips Fox - Nasturtiums, 1912.jpg, '' Nasturtiums'' (1912), with model Anderson File:Emanuel Phillips Fox - On the Balcony, 1912.jpg, '' On the Balcony'' (1912), with model Anderson File:E Phillips Fox - The green parasol, 1912.jpg, ''The Green Parasol'' (1912), with model Anderson

References

External links

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

Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...

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 importa ...

E. Phillips Fox
at the

''A Love Story'' (1903)
,

Art Gallery of Ballarat The Art Gallery of Ballarat is the oldest and largest regional art gallery in Australia. Established in 1884 as the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery by the citizens of Ballarat, both the building and part of its collection is listed on the Victorian H ...

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 Artists from Melbourne National Gallery of Victoria Art School alumni