English Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painter, Ethel Carrick, (later) Ethel Carrick Fox was born on 7 February, 1872, in Uxbridge, Middlesex, to Emma and Albert William Carrick, a wealthy draper. The family of ten children lived at Brookfield House, in Uxbridge. Carrick trained in London at the Guildhall School of Music and later, at the Slade School of Fine Art (1898-1903). She held her first show in London, in 1903.
- Carrick married Australian Impressionist artist Emanuel Phillips Fox in 1905, and moved to Paris where they remained until 1913. She exhibited at the Paris Salon d’Automne from 1906 onwards, the London Royal Academy of Arts, and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (from 1906).
- The Fox’s travelled widely in Europe, North Africa, and Tahiti, making trips to Australia in 1908 and 1913, where they would show in various progressive galleries in Melbourne and Sydney.
Prior to the outbreak of World War I, Carrick served as the vice-president of the International Union of Women Artists. But, when the War began, both she and her husband returned to Melbourne, where they raised funds from artists to support the French Red Cross.
After Emanuel’s untimely death from cancer in 1915, Carrick began two decades of travels that took her through the Middle East, South Asia (including India), and Europe.
- Carrick Fox exhibited at the Salon D’Automne, Royal Academy London, Australian Art Association, Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors, with both solo exhibitions and dual shows with her husband’s work, including one at the Melbourne Athenaeum, in 1914 (and again in 1944).
- Carrick Fox became sociétaire of the Salon d’Automne, where she served as a jury member (1912-1925), at the time, an unusual position for a woman to hold, indicating the high regard in which she was held by, in the Paris art world.
Carrick Fox returned intermittently to Australia to exhibit her work and go out on painting expeditions around the country. In the 1920s, she was recommended by the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, as a private teacher of still life painting, and she counted a number of Australians and Americans in Paris, among her students.
Late in her career, during the 1940s and 1950s, she exhibited with the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors.
- Ethel Carrick Fox died in Melbourne on 17 June, 1952.
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