Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Brigadier General Douglas Oswald Luke Kitto, Melbourne
thence by descent
Mrs Elizabeth Marian Hill, Melbourne
thence by descent
Private collection, Melbourne


Ethel Carrick was born in Uxbridge in 1872 and studied at London's prestigious Slade School of Fine Art prior to meeting Emanuel Phillips Fox in an artist's colony in St Ives, Cornwall. Following their marriage in 1905 they moved to Paris taking residence at 65 Boulevard Arago, south of the Luxembourg gardens. At the time Paris was the centre of the art-world, their proximity to local markets and gardens provided idyllic surroundings allowing both painters the freedom to refine their plein-air skills, painting vibrant crowded scenes in motion.

'The energy and liveliness of outdoor crowds occupied Ethel Carrick Fox through out her career, and she was particularly fascinated by markets, parks and beaches. Perfect subjects for her swiftly wrought impressions, these turn of the century public spaces were being transformed by modernity.

Carrick's early paintings... with gathering of women engaged in banter, show a conventional use of perspective, with figures placed in front of clearly identifiable architectural structures'1. The present work painted during a celebrated period in the artist's life, appears to have been painted in front of Le Palais du Luxembourg at the northern end of the gardens. A popular spot amongst visitors, the pond can be seen with its cherub sculptured fountain in the distance. Captured in a spontaneous fleeting moment, Carrick Fox's splendid use of richly coloured dabs of paint and their precise placement create a sophisticated spectacle of women and children enjoying the sunny weather.

1. Angela Goddard, Art, Love and Life: Ethel Carrick and E. Phillips Fox, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2011, p. 79